Train­ing should be pro­vid­ed to all pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school staff, as well as par­ents and oth­er stake­hold­ers about how gangs de­vel­op and how to re­spond to them. De-es­ca­lat­ing the vi­o­lence may re­quire many oth­er ini­tia­tives, such as in­tro­duc­ing stag­gered school clos­ing times to pre­vent clash­es be­tween ri­val gangs and short­er lunch breaks to lim­it the free time which pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for out­breaks of vi­o­lence.

It is sig­nif­i­cant that pub­lic ses­sions in the Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Ed­u­ca­tion have been so heav­i­ly over­shad­owed by school vi­o­lence. They were pre­ced­ed by the mur­ders of Suc­cess Laven­tille stu­dents De-Neil Smith and Mark Richards, who were am­bushed and shot dead as they trav­elled home from school. Now with the con­sul­ta­tions in progress there have been more in­ci­dents of school re­lat­ed vi­o­lence, in­clud­ing gang threats forc­ing the ear­ly clo­sure of the Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School and the mur­ders of two more school­boys.

As a re­sult, one of the ob­jec­tives of the on­go­ing con­sul­ta­tions, re­duc­ing in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence, bul­ly­ing and in­dis­ci­pline in schools, takes on greater ur­gency. There is no deny­ing that T&T's crime prob­lem is desta­bil­is­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, putting school-aged chil­dren at in­creased risk of vi­o­lence in their class­rooms and school­yards.

This prob­lem has been fes­ter­ing for many years. With very lit­tle re­sis­tance from the au­thor­i­ties, crim­i­nal gangs have been able to in­fil­trate trou­bled schools where they find many will­ing re­cruits for their crim­i­nal en­ter­pris­es–teenagers strug­gling with de­pri­va­tion, dys­func­tion­al fam­i­lies and few op­por­tu­ni­ties for pos­i­tive progress.

Those crim­i­nal in­flu­ences are al­so en­croach­ing on pres­tige schools. One of the teens mur­dered this week at­tend­ed a top sec­ondary school in east Trinidad and in re­cent times there have been wor­ry­ing in­ci­dents at oth­er schools well known for aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess­es. All of these are ev­i­dence of the neg­a­tive in­flu­ence gang cul­ture is hav­ing on T&T's schools, trig­ger­ing re­cent in­creas­es in vi­o­lence.

To halt this dan­ger­ous trend, the ed­u­ca­tors and de­ci­sion-mak­ers at the on­go­ing Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion must come up with short and medi­um term so­lu­tions. Ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion strate­gies that tar­get neigh­bour­hoods, fam­i­lies and schools should be de­vel­oped through col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

There was an ex­cel­lent rec­om­men­da­tion made dur­ing one of the ses­sions this week for es­tab­lish­ment of po­lice youth clubs in all pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. That ini­tia­tive will be most ef­fec­tive as part of a mul­ti-faceted ap­proach that "deglam­ouris­es" the gang­ster lifestyle, teach­es stu­dents about their de­struc­tive­ness, and pro­vides pos­i­tive ac­tiv­i­ties that will help them avoid be­ing drawn in­to crime.

Train­ing should be pro­vid­ed to all pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school staff, as well as par­ents and oth­er stake­hold­ers about how gangs de­vel­op and how to re­spond to them.

De-es­ca­lat­ing the vi­o­lence may re­quire many oth­er ini­tia­tives, such as in­tro­duc­ing stag­gered school clos­ing times to pre­vent clash­es be­tween ri­val gangs and short­er lunch breaks to lim­it the free time which pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for out­breaks of vi­o­lence.

Al­so, while it might be nec­es­sary to re­move stu­dents that threat­en the ed­u­ca­tion and safe­ty of their school­mates, al­ter­na­tive fa­cil­i­ties must be pro­vid­ed for their con­tin­ued ed­u­ca­tion so that they are not out on the streets. In ad­di­tion, clos­er at­ten­tion will have to be paid to school dropouts who "lime" near schools. Of­ten these are ac­tive re­cruiters for crim­i­nal gangs.

While not all cas­es of school vi­o­lence are gang-re­lat­ed, enough of them are to war­rant more fre­quent, close mon­i­tor­ing of the en­vi­ron­ment in and around schools to an­tic­i­pate and pre­vent crim­i­nal in­fil­tra­tion.

These are just some mat­ters that should be con­sid­ered by the stake­hold­ers now work­ing to re­store an op­ti­mum learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment in the na­tion's schools.