Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Par­ents of stu­dents at­tend­ing Cou­va West Sec­ondary School have shut it down in­def­i­nite­ly.For the sec­ond time yes­ter­day, the Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) staged a protest out­side the school at Bal­isi­er Av­enue, Cou­va.How­ev­er, this time, the 200-plus par­ents said they had had enough and promised that the school would re­main shut un­til Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh met with them to find a so­lu­tion to the myr­i­ad of health and safe­ty prob­lems.

The Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion re­gion­al pres­i­dent for Ca­roni, Es­ther Cruick­shank-Jerome, said the sit­u­a­tion was now over­bear­ing, as for the past year they had been con­tend­ing with a faulty air-con­di­tion unit, leak­ing roof, un­safe ceil­ings, un­suit­able bath­room con­di­tions and ab­sence of taps ex­cept in the wash­rooms.

Cruick­shank-Jerome said it was un­fair to ask stu­dents or teach­ers to oc­cu­py the un­safe class­rooms. She said on a dai­ly ba­sis par­ents had to leave their jobs or per­son­al tasks to re­turn to the school to col­lect their un­su­per­vised chil­dren."The ceil­ing is falling down, the sci­ence block is in a mess. I walked through the school this morn­ing, and I can't stay there for an­oth­er minute, so you can­not ex­pect teach­ers to sit down in a class like that to teach chil­dren.

"Par­ents have had enough. The school will be shut down, in­def­i­nite­ly, un­til we get an au­di­ence with the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion," Cruick­shank-Jerome said.Frus­trat­ed with the con­tin­ued clo­sure and ear­ly dis­missal of stu­dents since the start of the new school term, a group of about 30 par­ents, on Mon­day, pub­licly aired their con­cerns out­side the school. They in­sist­ed that class­es had not re­sumed as stat­ed by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry last Fri­day.

"Since school start­ed there has been no school. I want to know why," an­gry par­ent Vin­cent Boyce asked. "Oth­er than the ex­cus­es they are giv­ing us that a wa­ter line for the air flow sys­tem for the air con­di­tion is bro­ken, why it is this is not be­ing re­paired?"Boyce, the fa­ther of a Form Two stu­dent, said since his daugh­ter be­gan at­tend­ing that school in 2013, it had been closed on and off for a num­ber of dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

"At one point in time it was the as­bestos or fi­bre­glass in the sys­tem. That was re­paired. An­oth­er time it was a gas leak, which was re­paired. Then some of the teach­ers start­ed com­plain­ing that it was too cold."

Min­istry re­sponds

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Har­ri­lal Seecharam, ac­com­pa­nied by of­fi­cials from the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd (EF­CL) and the Ca­roni Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict, vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day to as­sess the sit­u­a­tion.The meet­ing in­clud­ed mem­bers of the lo­cal school board, the NPTA and mem­bers of the PTA.

It was de­cid­ed that EF­CL and En­er­gy Dy­nam­ics Ltd (EDL) would work to­geth­er to find short- and long-term so­lu­tions.EF­CL and EDL will ex­am­ine the ex­tent of the prob­lem and ad­vise what tem­po­rary cool­ing sys­tems could be put in place.In the in­ter­im, on Mon­day, stu­dents of Forms Four and Five will con­tin­ue to at­tend school for half a day on a dai­ly ba­sis un­til the re­pairs are done.

Forms One to Three stu­dents will be kept at home and will be fur­ther ad­vised by the min­istry.