In the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s view, the New Be­gin­nings Ed­u­ca­tion­al Cen­tre in Pe­tit Val­ley has nine stu­dents and will get the rel­e­vant fund­ing for them.

“Fund­ing is per stu­dent, and they have less stu­dents this year. There­fore, they will get less fund­ing,” Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

How­ev­er, prin­ci­pal of the in­sti­tu­tion, Phyl­lis Grif­fith, says the spe­cial needs school has 14 stu­dents and five of them were not reg­is­tered with the min­istry.

“Since COVID our num­bers have been dwin­dling and drop­ping. This term, in the min­istry’s eyes, we have nine stu­dents and it’s be­cause these nine stu­dents ei­ther have a med­ical or Psy­cho Ed (psy­choe­d­u­ca­tion as­sess­ment) which will al­low them to as­sess the grant. But in truth and in fact, we have 14 chil­dren ... they are un­able to get it be­cause one, a psy­cho Ed is very ex­pen­sive,” she ex­plained.

Grif­fith said the re­cent ad­just­ment gives them enough mon­ey to hire and pay on­ly one teacher, one aide, her­self and a clean­er.

The lack of fund­ing means Grif­fith will have to let go of three staff mem­bers, which will lead to in­ad­e­quate staff to prop­er­ly su­per­vise and teach the school’s 14 stu­dents.

“It can­not work be­cause of the di­verse chal­lenges the chil­dren have, so where we at, I had to let the par­ents know some­thing,” she said.

Si­mone Williams, par­ent of an 11-year-old stu­dent, said she has seen a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in her son’s abil­i­ties since she en­rolled him at the ed­u­ca­tion­al cen­tre one year ago. She ad­mit­ted they recog­nised he need­ed ad­di­tion­al as­sis­tance from first year in his pre­vi­ous school but the prin­ci­pal de­nied it.

“He was just go­ing through the sys­tem ... So far, he has im­proved in a lot of things he was not do­ing in the main­stream sys­tem,” Williams said.

But she’s wor­ried that his abil­i­ties may regress if staff is cut. The moth­er plead­ed with the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to re­con­sid­er its al­lo­ca­tion.

“Re­mem­ber, these stu­dents not go­ing to be sit­ting down be­hind a desk and say ‘okay Miss I’ll do this, I’ll do that, Miss’ and they have to take their time to calm those stu­dents down, so it is chal­leng­ing,” she said.

Grif­fith said adding in­sult to in­jury, the sav­ings the school had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed from fundrais­ing dri­ves was stolen by ban­dits who broke in­to the school ear­li­er this year.

New Be­gin­nings is set to open next week but Grif­fith has not slept since learn­ing about the hard de­ci­sion she has to make and what the school year may have in store.

The school can be con­tact­ed at 633-0112 or email new­be­gin­cen­tre@gmail.com.