If the old adage that a pic­ture paints a thou­sand words is true, then the pho­to­graph of the back of Mt Hope Sec­ondary school on the front page of Tues­day’s T&T Guardian tells a sto­ry of grime, ex­treme ne­glect, di­lap­i­da­tion and de­plorable con­di­tions.

The di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tions of the 52-year-old school were de­scribed by a Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion mem­ber on Mon­day.

The sup­po­si­tion that this build­ing is not fit for chil­dren, teach­ers or the an­cil­lary staff that work there is borne out by the long list of re­pairs the school re­quires.

That list was pro­vid­ed to this news­pa­per by Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly. She said, in ad­di­tion, through the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny (MTS), a con­trac­tor is be­ing pro­cured to com­plete the re­pairs to the school since the Gov­ern­ment can­not af­ford to con­struct a new school there.

While the min­is­ter must be thanked for her hon­esty, the ques­tion re­mains why was the ma­jor re­me­di­al work the school ob­vi­ous­ly re­quires not com­plet­ed by Sep­tem­ber 2? On the first day of the new school term, why was Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly re­fer­ring to a con­trac­tor be­ing pro­cured to com­plete the school re­pairs? When were the re­pairs start­ed and when are they sched­uled to be com­plet­ed?

Asked why the re­pairs on the school were not ad­dressed dur­ing the long va­ca­tion, the min­is­ter was quot­ed as say­ing, “The fund­ing re­quired to im­ple­ment the en­tire list of school re­pair projects for the crit­i­cal re­pair pro­gramme 2024 to­talled $190 mil­lion. An ini­tial $20 mil­lion was avail­able to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, and that was utilised to deal with the most crit­i­cal works. As more fund­ing be­came avail­able, oth­er crit­i­cal projects were added to the work pro­gramme.”

This sug­gests that Mt Hope Sec­ondary was not among the schools slat­ed for the crit­i­cal re­pairs re­quired for it to be in a more suit­able con­di­tion for the new school term. It al­so rais­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the crit­i­cal re­pairs for the school have been post­poned for many years.

But the sor­ry state of Mt Hope Sec­ondary al­so re­quires a re­sponse from the Min­istry of Fi­nance on why mon­ey to fa­cil­i­tate not on­ly re­pairs to Mt Hope but oth­er schools sim­i­lar­ly high­light­ed, has not been sourced for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

It should be clear to the tech­nocrats in the Fi­nance Min­istry of Fi­nance that en­sur­ing all the na­tion’s schools are fit for learn­ing to take place.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter al­so needs to be clear on the mon­ey avail­able to re­pair and main­tain schools. On Mon­day, she re­ferred to an al­lo­ca­tion of $190 mil­lion for the Schools’ Re­pair Pro­gramme. On Tues­day, how­ev­er, she said out of a bud­get of $5 bil­lion, on­ly $150 mil­lion is left for school re­pairs. This con­fu­sion is sur­pris­ing for this min­is­ter.

If the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry is un­able to en­sure 100 per cent com­ple­tion of school re­pairs by the end of the va­ca­tion pe­ri­ods, it needs to stop do­ing the same thing and ex­pect­ing dif­fer­ent re­sults. One sug­ges­tion is for the min­istry to part­ner with busi­ness­es in com­mu­ni­ties that have schools in crit­i­cal need of re­pair. An­oth­er is for it to con­sid­er al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tion for af­fect­ed stu­dents un­til key re­me­di­al works are com­plet­ed.

What­ev­er so­lu­tion the min­istry set­tles on, this should be the last year in which these com­plaints are heard. T&T is too ad­vanced to al­low these peren­ni­al in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues to im­pact the qual­i­ty of this na­tion’s ed­u­ca­tion.