Sascha Wil­son

For the sec­ond time since the new school year start­ed, par­ents of chil­dren at­tend­ing the Clax­ton Bay Ju­nior An­gli­can School protest­ed with plac­ards in front of the old school build­ing yes­ter­day.

They com­plained that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry had failed to pro­vide trans­porta­tion for the chil­dren, many of whom have been miss­ing class­es since school re­opened.

In 2019, the school build­ing in Clax­ton Bay was con­demned due to in­fra­struc­tur­al de­fects and the chil­dren re­lo­cat­ed to a school in Mara­bel­la. The par­ents said they were promised trans­porta­tion and a new school build­ing.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, par­ent Bar­ry Alex­is com­plained, “We were asked to pro­vide a list for school trans­port now that the school is re­lo­cat­ed to Mara­bel­la, that list was pro­vid­ed. We are four weeks in, we have not yet got­ten any as­sis­tance where trans­porta­tion is con­cerned for chil­dren who may not be so read­i­ly in­clined or fi­nan­cial­ly able to trav­el from Clax­ton Bay to Mara­bel­la.”

He said the dis­tance pos­es a great chal­lenge for par­ents/guardians.

“We have par­ents out here who are not work­ing, some of them are sin­gle-par­ent homes, some of them have mul­ti­ple chil­dren that have to go this dis­tance. We would have writ­ten to the min­is­ter di­rect­ly and reached out to her on Face­book, ini­ti­at­ed a pe­ti­tion and we will con­tin­ue to do all with­in our pow­er as par­ents to plead with the pow­ers at be to lis­ten to our plight,” Alex­is said.

Not­ing that the min­is­ter has been tour­ing var­i­ous schools, he in­vit­ed her to vis­it their school and “feel the pain of the chil­dren.”

Lament­ing that protest­ing seems to be the on­ly way they could get their mes­sage across, he said par­ents are ask­ing the An­gli­can Board and the min­is­ter to meet, dis­cuss the way for­ward and take ac­tion.

An­oth­er par­ent, Sher­ry Stephen, ex­plained that it costs $30 dai­ly in pub­lic trans­porta­tion per child from Clax­ton Bay junc­tion to the school in Mara­bel­la.

Not­ing that on­ly 40 stu­dents turned out to school last Fri­day, she said that par­ents were not be­ing delin­quent but just can­not af­ford to send their chil­dren to school.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ex­plained that they are try­ing to source a con­ces­sion­aire to work the route.

She said, “PTSC has had dif­fi­cul­ty sourc­ing a con­ces­sion­aire to ac­cept the route, which has led to the un­for­tu­nate de­lay. They con­tin­ue to seek con­ces­sion­aires,” she ex­plained.