An­na-Lisa Paul

The Rose Hill RC Pri­ma­ry School in Laven­tille will re­main closed for the rest of the week fol­low­ing the lat­est shoot­ing in­ci­dent be­tween war­ring gangs on Mon­day, in which gun­fire was heard echo­ing through the hills of Laven­tille.

And fol­low­ing pre­lim­i­nary ap­proval by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) on Wednes­day, the staff and pupils are to be tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to the St Do­minic’s Chil­dren’s Home in Bel­mont.

Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) CEO Sharon Man­groo con­firmed a build­ing on the com­pound has been des­ig­nat­ed for use and they are hop­ing to have the pupils back in school by Mon­day.

How­ev­er, she warned: “While we are aim­ing for Mon­day, the re­al­i­ty may be dif­fer­ent, as the lim­it­ing fac­tors are trans­port for stu­dents and for the fur­ni­ture etc. The for­mer may take a while to arrange, as there are costs to be ap­proved.”

Ap­peal­ing for help yes­ter­day, she said, “It is not safe. No teacher wants to go to the school. They are too trau­ma­tised. We will need po­lice pres­ence on the day that the move takes place.”

She added, “The teach­ers are brave­ly try­ing to con­tin­ue on­line school­ing but at­ten­dance is less than 50 per cent.”

Rapid bursts of gun­fire from war­ring gangs in Laven­tille, Mor­vant and east Port-of-Spain have been re­ferred to as a norm for those at­tend­ing the school, which is lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of La Coulee and Schuller Streets, Laven­tille.

In a bid to keep their charges safe, the al­most dai­ly oc­cur­rence has forced teach­ers to in­tro­duce a “drill” for pupils, which sees them crawl­ing un­der desks and cov­er­ing their heads, eyes and ears.

A two-minute video on Mon­day’s in­ci­dent record­ed by a school of­fi­cial and post­ed to so­cial me­dia, re­veals a scared teacher whis­per­ing to her ter­ri­fied pupils, “Sssh­hh … sssh­hh … be qui­et, be qui­et chil­dren. Down, down. Sssh­hh…”

As gun­shots are heard in the dis­tance, the teacher con­tin­ued to urge those ly­ing un­der ta­bles to, “Sssh­hh…be qui­et chil­dren, the oth­er side is an­swer­ing back. Sssh­hh…”

Mov­ing around the class­room to check on the pupils, the teacher is heard beg­ging, “Oh gosh, down chil­dren, get down. Sssh­hh.”

As the gun­shots sound clos­er, she ex­claimed, “Oh my God, oh my God…sssh­hh… sssh­hh…Oh my God chil­dren, down down down. Sssh­hh…sssh­hh. Chil­dren, just be qui­et … just be qui­et.”

While some par­ents have al­ready with­drawn their chil­dren from the school and en­rolled them else­where, of­fi­cials yes­ter­day said, “There are some that just can­not af­ford to.”

Res­i­dents locked in

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the school on Wednes­day, the build­ing re­mained closed, with just the se­cu­ri­ty guards present.

Even the sur­round­ing streets re­mained de­sert­ed, while near­by homes re­mained tight­ly locked and win­dows bare­ly cracked. The on­ly sign that per­sons were in­side was the run­ning wa­ter in the drains and air-con­di­tion­ing units that con­tin­ued to come on and off.

A bul­let hole from Mon­day’s shoot­ing was clear­ly vis­i­ble in the sign post­ed out­side the school’s guard booth, which read, “When you en­ter this lov­ing school, con­sid­er your­self one of the spe­cial mem­bers of an ex­tra­or­di­nary fam­i­ly.”

A school of­fi­cial who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said, “Par­ents are dis­traught. We want some kind of po­lice pres­ence here. Long ago, of­fi­cers used to come when school be­gan and do pa­trols dur­ing the day, and come back in time for school to over. We felt safer then. I not say­ing peo­ple can’t get shoot still, but at least the kids and teach­ers didn’t feel so scared.”

Asked about Mon­day’s shoot­ing, the of­fi­cial said, “That’s a reg­u­lar thing up here. The chil­dren know the drill when gun­shots start, from the top floor to the bot­tom, every­body had­da get low.”

Pri­or to Mon­day’s shoot­ing, dis­cus­sions had been held with the prin­ci­pal and a del­e­ga­tion from the school, in­clud­ing one par­ent, for the tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion of staff and pupils.

This rec­om­men­da­tion, Man­groo said, was pro­posed to re­main in ef­fect, “un­til the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty can, on a sus­tain­able ba­sis, as­sure the safe­ty of not on­ly Rose Hill staff and stu­dents, but ALL of the schools in the Mor­vant/Laven­tille area.”

Com­ment­ing on the video, she ad­mit­ted it pro­vid­ed a “graph­ic de­scrip­tion of the trau­ma in­flict­ed on stu­dents and staff at this school.”

Point­ing to oth­er schools near­by that have al­so had to mar­shal their pupils in­to safe ar­eas when gun­fire is heard, Man­groo said, “Trag­i­cal­ly, some pri­ma­ry school stu­dents can iden­ti­fy the gun from which the am­mu­ni­tion is is­sued by the sound of the gun­fire.”

Man­groo said the CEBM will re­quire the as­sis­tance of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in pro­vid­ing dai­ly trans­porta­tion for the pupils to and from the new lo­ca­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Mar­tin Lum Kin said while mea­sures are ini­ti­at­ed in the short term, it is a sit­u­a­tion­al is­sue that must be dealt with, as there are oth­er schools in hot spot ar­eas that are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sim­i­lar type is­sues.

He said, “Very soon, we will be meet­ing with our teach­ers to hear their con­cerns.”

Lum Kin added, “There needs to be an ef­fort to deal with this long term.”

In­di­cat­ing that a re­turn to on­line school­ing might be one op­tion that needs to be con­sid­ered again at this time, the TTUTA head said, “Our teach­ers are not ad­verse to any method­ol­o­gy in the short term, to deal with the teach­ing and learn­ing loss.”

Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don al­so com­ment­ed on the sit­u­a­tion on Tues­day, as he said the many changes in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ters and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers had had lit­tle im­pact on crime.

He al­so said, “Just yes­ter­day (Mon­day), the chil­dren of Rose Hill had to duck un­der their bench­es and their ta­bles as gun­fire had hap­pened for a minute-and-a-half out­side, trau­ma­tis­ing an en­tire school.”

Com­ment­ing on Mon­day’s in­ci­dent, which she de­scribed as “most un­for­tu­nate,” on Wednes­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ad­vised, “For the rest of this week, teach­ers will utilise vir­tu­al plat­forms for teach­ing.”

Re­veal­ing that vir­tu­al coun­selling ses­sions host­ed by the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion had be­gun yes­ter­day with pupils, school per­son­nel and par­ents, the min­is­ter added, “I have spo­ken to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice about the sit­u­a­tion, as it is not on­ly this school which has this type of is­sue af­fect­ing stu­dents, teach­ers and school op­er­a­tions.

“The com­mis­sion­er is cur­rent­ly hav­ing in­ter­nal dis­cus­sions and will re­vert to­day (yes­ter­day) with the TTPS’s rec­om­men­da­tions for en­sur­ing the safe­ty of all school per­son­nel dur­ing school hours; not for this school on­ly, but for a few oth­ers which are sim­i­lar­ly af­fect­ed.”

She said school re­lo­ca­tion has been sug­gest­ed as a so­lu­tion and that “op­tion is al­so be­ing eval­u­at­ed, though no fi­nal de­ci­sion on re­lo­ca­tion has been made at this time.”

“The MoE’s fo­cus re­mains, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the rest of this week, on meet­ing the emo­tion­al needs of the staff and stu­dents who un­der­went this trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ence,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.