Sto­ries by RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Even as T&T said good­bye to Jay­den Lalchan, who took his life to end the tor­ment of bul­ly­ing, par­ents of stu­dents at­tend­ing Fyz­abad Pres­by­ter­ian School al­so called for help, say­ing a Stan­dard 3 pupil is al­leged­ly ter­ror­is­ing both stu­dents and teach­ers.

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that par­ents of Stan­dard 1 to 3 pupils were called in­to a meet­ing in late Sep­tem­ber af­ter the al­leged bul­ly, nine, in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly touched a fe­male stu­dent.

Many of the par­ents com­plained about the con­duct of the al­leged bul­ly, who had been sus­pend­ed sev­er­al times but con­tin­ued his tor­ment.

“The child re­port­ed­ly pushed down a teacher (name called) in Stan­dard Two a few months ago—she was his class teacher. They keep mov­ing him from class to class, but none of the male teach­ers want him in their class,” the source said. 

For this term, he was ab­sent for two weeks.

A mem­ber of the Par­ent/Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion al­so con­firmed the bul­ly has been ter­ror­is­ing the chil­dren.

“I am told he has prob­lems at home; the moth­er is nev­er around, and the fa­ther is a known per­son to the po­lice,” the par­ent said.

At a re­cent meet­ing, a se­nior school of­fi­cial told par­ents that he did not want any­one to “shoot up” his ve­hi­cle. 

“He said he does not know what to do with the child any­more. The child has been re­ferred to Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices, but be­cause of who his fa­ther is, he seems to be above the law,” the source said.

In des­per­a­tion, some par­ents are re­mov­ing their chil­dren from the school. 

“The al­leged bul­ly touched a girl in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly in late Sep­tem­ber, and her par­ents lodged com­plaints with the prin­ci­pal,” one par­ent said.

“We are con­cerned about this be­cause what if this bul­ly dri­ves a stu­dent to do some­thing ac­tion, sim­i­lar to what hap­pened with Jay­den Lalchan,” the par­ent asked.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, a se­nior of­fi­cial from the Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School Board of Ed­u­ca­tion con­firmed the board is aware of be­hav­iour­al is­sues rel­a­tive to the child.

“Based on re­ports from the prin­ci­pal, he has been sus­pend­ed nu­mer­ous times over the years, with an ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion on one oc­ca­sion,” the of­fi­cial said.

The mat­ter was al­so re­ferred to Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices and the po­lice au­thor­i­ties. How­ev­er, there has been no change in his be­hav­iour and a res­o­lu­tion to con­cerns raised by par­ents and stu­dents,” the board of­fi­cial said.

“We trust that speedy res­o­lu­tion is found in the in­ter­est of all par­ties.”

Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that po­lice of­fi­cers were sent to the school to speak to the stu­dent yes­ter­day. 

When con­tact­ed, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said she or­dered an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the in­ci­dents in­volv­ing the stu­dent.