Sascha Wil­son

While oth­er stu­dents were re­turn­ing to school for the first time in two years on Tues­day, par­ents and pupils of the San­ta Flo­ra Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School were protest­ing the con­di­tions of the build­ing in which class­es are be­ing con­duct­ed.

Par­ents com­plained that six years ago, the school was de­cant­ed to the Petrotrin Beach Camp Fa­cil­i­ty in Pa­lo Seco, with a promise from the gov­ern­ment that the chil­dren would be housed there no longer than three to six months un­til a new school was built. The school has a pop­u­la­tion of 250 pupils.

For the last two years, pupils were learn­ing vir­tu­al­ly but now that schools have re­opened, the par­ents are con­cerned about their chil­dren’s health. They com­plained that the ven­ti­la­tion is poor, the space is cramped, there is no sick­bay, a lack of ad­e­quate hand­wash­ing sta­tions and wa­ter and elec­tri­cal chal­lenges.

Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Roger Brad­shaw lament­ed, “We are say­ing as a body enough is enough.”

Due to the poor con­di­tions of the fa­cil­i­ty, Brad­shaw said par­ents want the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to al­low them to con­tin­ue with on­line class­es un­til the new school is com­plet­ed. He said their in­for­ma­tion is that the school will be com­plet­ed in Au­gust. The par­ents, how­ev­er, have de­cid­ed to keep their chil­dren home un­til the min­istry ad­dress­es their con­cerns.

PTA sec­re­tary Sarah Gopaul said the main is­sue was in­ad­e­quate space. She said they have been told the school has re­vert­ed to pre-COVID guide­lines, which means there will be no so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

“We were al­ready cramped be­fore. If one child con­tracts COVID in that class then the en­tire school pop­u­la­tion will be at risk be­cause there is no nat­ur­al ven­ti­la­tion, we are us­ing air con­di­tion. That is an is­sue. There is no sick­bay. There are on­ly two wash­room fa­cil­i­ties for these chil­dren to use.”

De­scrib­ing the con­di­tions as No Man’s Land, she said, “They had 24 months of school clo­sure due to COVID 19 and noth­ing was done to en­sure that when our chil­dren come back out even­tu­al­ly for the new open­ing, we would be in a safe en­vi­ron­ment.”

Not­ing that the new school was 95 per cent com­plet­ed, she ques­tioned why the min­istry could not com­plete the build­ing.

“We tol­er­ate it for so long, we refuse to en­dan­ger our chil­dren. We have full sup­port of the par­ent body, we do not have any chil­dren in that school this morn­ing and we are de­mand­ing that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion lis­ten to what we are say­ing. We will not send our chil­dren in­to that en­vi­ron­ment. It is un­safe.”

She said they have al­so had a host of is­sues at the school in the past, in­clud­ing a fire at an elec­tri­cal pan­el fire, toi­let is­sues and the build­ing falling apart.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue , Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said ap­proval had not been grant­ed for the con­tin­u­a­tion of vir­tu­al school be­cause there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for it.

She said the school su­per­vi­sor led a phys­i­cal site vis­it on April 11 with the PTA ex­ec­u­tive to demon­strate the school’s readi­ness and again on April 13 via Zoom with the larg­er PTA class rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

She said the school su­per­vi­sor al­so re­spond­ed to and ad­dressed con­cerns raised in the PTA’s cor­re­spon­dence dur­ing a cor­dial meet­ing.

Via What­sApp, Gads­by-Dol­ly in­di­cat­ed, “A memo was sent to all par­ents and teach­ers with de­tailed guide­lines for school op­er­a­tions and pre­pared­ness for re­open­ing on Term 3 dat­ed April 15, 2022. No ap­proval for vir­tu­al modal­i­ty has been grant­ed, as the need for same has not been jus­ti­fied.”

She added that the new school was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in Au­gust.