Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

This week will make it ex­act­ly six years since pupils of San­ta Flo­ra Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School were de­cant­ed to what par­ents/guardians called less than sat­is­fac­to­ry ac­com­mo­da­tion at Beach Camp, Pa­lo Seco.

How­ev­er, while the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion com­mis­sioned their new school on Mon­day, par­ents don’t con­sid­er it a vic­to­ry since there is no time­line on when the chil­dren will oc­cu­py the new fa­cil­i­ty.

“We are very pleased that we are at this point. All cred­it must be giv­en to the par­ents. The par­ents unit­ed and they called for this, so we are very grate­ful that we are here now but the job is not done un­til our chil­dren has oc­cu­pied the build­ing,” school PTA sec­re­tary Sarah Gopaul told Guardian Me­dia af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny.

She said the oc­cu­pa­tion of their new school is what the PTA will con­tin­ue striv­ing to­wards.

“We will con­tin­ue to work with the teach­ers, the min­istry, as a unit­ed body seek­ing what is best for our chil­dren, achiev­ing goals and ex­ceed­ing them.”

Par­ent Cindy Man­son echoed Gopaul’s sen­ti­ment, say­ing she was hap­py “but still we need to get the chil­dren in here as soon as pos­si­ble in or­der to ac­tu­al­ly feel what we sup­posed to be feel­ing a few years ago.”

Prin­ci­pal Ria Dwari­ka said a date had not yet been set for the pupils and staff to be­gin op­er­a­tions at the new­ly built fa­cil­i­ty. How­ev­er, she said she knows the min­istry is try­ing to give them the clos­est date pos­si­ble.

“I am await­ing fur­ther word from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion as to when we can ac­tu­al­ly oc­cu­py the com­pound. That in­for­ma­tion has not been passed on to me as yet but I know they are work­ing on it to fa­cil­i­tate as soon as pos­si­ble,” she said.

With just around 250 pupils cur­rent­ly en­rolled in the school, the new build­ing has room to ac­com­mo­date al­most twice that at 450 pupils, the prin­ci­pal said. She hopes the new mod­ern fa­cil­i­ty will al­low for the school com­mu­ni­ty to grow.

“Not just in num­bers but cer­tain­ly all that it promis­es to of­fer (with) the fa­cil­i­ties. We haven’t been able to have ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, we were lim­it­ed for space, so all those lofty pro­grammes that you heard that we have (that) pro­duced na­tion­al fig­ures for, all of those pro­grammes would have been down­sized for the past six years be­cause we didn’t have the space so cer­tain­ly we will be de­vel­op­ing in many of those ar­eas,” Dwari­ka said.

In April, par­ents and the PTA led protest ac­tion de­mand­ing they be giv­en the new school. Speak­ing at the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny, La Brea MP Stephen Mc Clashie ac­knowl­edged the tur­bu­lent road to this point but told at­ten­dees, “What is in the past is be­hind us.”

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so reaf­firmed her com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing the na­tion’s stu­dents are prop­er­ly equipped while seek­ing their ed­u­ca­tion.