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Saturday, May 3, 2025

Should school principal step down?

by

20120203

Yes­ter­day Ar­lene Black­man, the prin­ci­pal and own­er of Mar­aval-based Black­man's Pri­vate School, ap­peared in a Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate's Court charged with cer­tain of­fences un­der the Chil­dren's Act re­lat­ing to an al­leged in­ci­dent at the school on Jan­u­ary 24. The in­ci­dent in­volves two pupils of the school, aged nine and ten. As with any oth­er ac­cused who has been charged and brought be­fore the courts, Mrs Black­man un­equiv­o­cal­ly has the right to be pre­sumed in­no­cent of the charges that have been prof­fered against her, un­til she has been proved guilty, ac­cord­ing to law in a pub­lic tri­al at which she has had all the guar­an­tees nec­es­sary for her de­fence. The in­ci­dent and the case have al­ready at­tract­ed some in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

The case is like­ly to at­tract on­go­ing and in­tense me­dia scruti­ny giv­en the pro­file of the de­fen­dant, the fact that the com­plainants in the case are young boys and al­so be­cause this is one of the first ma­jor pros­e­cu­tions to be brought by the au­thor­i­ties un­der The Chil­dren's Act, whose im­ple­men­ta­tion has been the sub­ject of some con­tro­ver­sy. As the own­er and prin­ci­pal of a pri­vate pri­ma­ry school, Mrs Black­man is some­one who has in­vest­ed a sig­nif­i­cant part of her pro­fes­sion­al life in mould­ing and groom­ing young chil­dren at a very im­pres­sion­able stage in their lives. The thou­sands of Black­man's alum­ni per­form­ing at high lev­els in jobs around the world are tes­ta­ment to the ster­ling con­tri­bu­tion that she has made to ed­u­ca­tion in this coun­try.

Giv­en that con­tri­bu­tion, the pub­lic­i­ty that the case is like­ly to at­tract and the un­cer­tain fu­ture that the pupils of the school find them­selves in, it may be in Mrs Black­man's best in­ter­est to ap­point some­one else to run the school while she de­fends her­self against these charges. The prin­ci­ple of step­ping down when charges have been laid is well es­tab­lished for peo­ple in pub­lic life. Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment chair­man Franklin Khan and for­mer PNM En­er­gy Min­is­ter Er­ic Williams both re­signed as soon as they were charged in 2005 in re­la­tion to claims made by Dhansam Dhan­sook. In Britain yes­ter­day, Cab­i­net min­is­ter Chris Huhne re­signed short­ly af­ter he was charged over an al­leged at­tempt to pin a speed­ing penal­ty on his ex-wife. Huhne said he was re­sign­ing be­cause he did not want to dis­tract from ei­ther his of­fi­cial du­ties or from his de­fence of his rep­u­ta­tion.On Thurs­day, Brazil's min­is­ter of cities Mario Ne­gromonte, re­signed amid al­le­ga­tions that he award­ed pub­lic work con­tracts to com­pa­nies that had fi­nanced his par­ty. He de­nied all ac­cu­sa­tions and said his res­ig­na­tion in no way in­di­cat­ed he was guilty.

The Eng­lish Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day de­cid­ed to strip the cap­tain­cy of the Eng­lish foot­ball team from Chelsea de­fend­er John Ter­ry "un­til the al­le­ga­tions against him are re­solved." Those al­le­ga­tions in­volve a tri­al for racial­ly abus­ing a com­peti­tor. In each of the cas­es cit­ed above, it was de­cid­ed to step down be­cause the per­son had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that went above and be­yond them­selves: ei­ther to the par­ty or to the Gov­ern­ment. As the own­er of the school which bears her name, Mrs Black­man an­swers to no one-not to a board or even di­rect­ly to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. She an­swers to no one ex­cept the par­ents who pay thou­sands of dol­lars in fees every term for their chil­dren to at­tend her school-and the chil­dren them­selves. It is for the par­ents, in con­sul­ta­tion with Mrs Black­man, then, to de­cide whether the ed­u­ca­tion of the chil­dren who at­tend the school would be best served by the prin­ci­pal con­tin­u­ing to run the school or by the prin­ci­pal de­cid­ing to hand over to some­one else.


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