RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt 

The prin­ci­pal of Ste Madeleine Sec­ondary School suf­fered bruis­es to her face af­ter be­ing at­tacked by an irate par­ent dur­ing a meet­ing at the school yes­ter­day.

The at­tack came days af­ter two stu­dents ap­peared in court for pos­ses­sion of drugs last Thurs­day.

Last night, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly strong­ly con­demned the at­tack, say­ing the min­istry has been giv­ing sup­port to the prin­ci­pal fol­low­ing the trau­ma­tis­ing or­deal.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “This school, like all oth­ers, is sub­ject to the Na­tion­al School Dis­ci­pline Ma­trix, and stu­dent in­frac­tions are han­dled ac­cord­ing­ly.”

She added, “The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion strong­ly con­demns any phys­i­cal or oth­er at­tack on our staff. We are fol­low­ing up with the prin­ci­pal and her re­cov­ery from this trau­ma­tis­ing event. A re­port will al­so be made to the TTPS.”

Last night, po­lice launched a man­hunt for the par­ent, who lives in La Ro­main.

Po­lice said the in­ci­dent oc­curred at 9.15 am, af­ter the prin­ci­pal called the par­ent in to dis­cuss the sus­pen­sion of a male stu­dent. That stu­dent had 20 sus­pen­sions on file, Guardian Me­dia was told.

Con­cerned Par­ents’ Move­ment chair­man Clarence Men­doza con­firmed the sus­pen­sions, say­ing the in­ci­dent was linked to the dis­cov­ery of half an ounce of mar­i­jua­na in a class­room last Fri­day. He not­ed that af­ter be­ing sum­moned, the irate par­ent al­leged­ly ver­bal­ly abused the prin­ci­pal and then struck her with a wa­ter bot­tle dur­ing a heat­ed dis­cus­sion.

Po­lice ar­rived short­ly there­after but the par­ent had al­ready de­part­ed, but not be­fore de­liv­er­ing sev­er­al threats.

Men­doza said the sit­u­a­tion was alarm­ing and must be stopped.

“The Con­cerned Par­ents’ Move­ment is not con­don­ing any vi­o­lence to­wards our prin­ci­pal or teach­ers and vi­o­lence against stu­dents in our schools,” Men­doza said.

He again re­newed his call for bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures at the school.

“We would like to see se­cu­ri­ty beefed up where a post is put close to the staffroom or the prin­ci­pal’s of­fice where an MTS guard can be post­ed when any par­ent or any vis­i­tor comes in­to the ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fice,” Men­doza rec­om­mend­ed.

He said teach­ers were now afraid.

“Most teach­ers did not know what took place be­cause they were teach­ing in the class­room but when they heard, they were shocked. They al­so have fears of par­ents com­ing in­to the com­pound in such a vi­o­lent man­ner. It is alarm­ing that some­thing like this can take place in a school,” Men­doza re­vealed.

Say­ing so­ci­ety’s vi­o­lence was now tak­ing place with­in school com­pounds, Men­doza re­vealed that the prin­ci­pal sus­tained fa­cial bruis­es and was tak­en for treat­ment at the Ste Madeleine Health Cen­tre. She was sub­se­quent­ly dis­charged.

“We are ask­ing par­ents to de­sist from en­gag­ing in any vi­o­lent ac­tion when com­ing in­to our school,” Men­doza said.

Last week, two stu­dents were ar­rest­ed and charged with drug pos­ses­sion, and sub­se­quent­ly re­leased on bail. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, half an ounce of mar­i­jua­na was dis­cov­ered in an­oth­er class­room, lead­ing to the sus­pen­sion of a male stu­dent.

TTUTA re­sponds

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin al­so con­demned the as­sault, say­ing the min­istry must im­me­di­ate­ly work to start men­tor­ship, peer coun­selling, me­di­a­tion and con­flict res­o­lu­tion pro­grammes at the Ste Madeleine School.

“We are not to­tal­ly sur­prised by this. The school needs ad­di­tion­al at­ten­tion in ar­eas of se­cu­ri­ty and fill­ing of va­can­cies. As TTUTA point­ed out, that school is gross­ly un­der­staffed,” he said.

Not­ing that a par­ent was in­volved, Lum Kin said this ac­tion was not a good ex­am­ple to stu­dents.

“TTUTA con­demns this and we want the min­istry to in­ter­vene now to stem stu­dent in­dis­ci­pline and to stop the pos­ses­sion of il­lic­it sub­stances at the school by stu­dents,” Lum Kin re­vealed.

The TTUTA pres­i­dent not­ed that prop­er mon­i­tor­ing was need­ed at the school, in­clud­ing as­sis­tance from the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices.