Sascha Wil­son

and Kel­ly ann Lemessy

With school set to re­open on Tues­day fol­low­ing the Christ­mas hol­i­days, par­ents of pupils at­tend­ing the St Therese RC Pri­ma­ry School are not pre­pared to send their chil­dren to school be­cause of safe­ty con­cerns.

Fol­low­ing an elec­tri­cal is­sue at the school in Rio Claro on No­vem­ber 2, the par­ents con­tin­ued to send their chil­dren to school. How­ev­er, they have de­cid­ed to keep them at home for the new term.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that since 2019, the St Therese pupils have been oc­cu­py­ing on­ly the up­per floor of the school build­ing to ac­com­mo­date pupils of the Poole RC Pri­ma­ry School who were re­lo­cat­ed to the down­stairs lev­el.

The Poole RC stu­dents had to be re­lo­cat­ed fol­low­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues at their school.

St There­sa’s Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Eliz­a­beth Cor­ban told Guardian Me­dia that a con­tract was award­ed to a con­trac­tor in the last week of the school term and works are on­go­ing, but they al­so face oth­er chal­lenges in­clud­ing a di­lap­i­dat­ed floor­ing and ter­mite in­fes­ta­tion.

“In ad­di­tion to the elec­tri­cal work that has start­ed, the up­stairs of the school is in ur­gent need of re­pairs be­cause the floor, in and of it­self, is ter­mite-rid­den, there are lots of holes.

“It is very un­safe for par­ents and teach­ers, their shoe heels are go­ing in­to the wood­en floor. You have lots of ter­mites. It is to­tal­ly un­safe and it should be giv­en the ur­gency that is need­ed so that all who oc­cu­py the com­pound can feel safe in their en­vi­ron­ment,” she said.

Cor­ban said it was un­fair that their chil­dren were be­ing housed in an un­safe area at school.

She fur­ther called on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to find al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tions for the Poole RC stu­dents.

“We, the par­ents of St Therese RC School, are de­mand­ing that we utilise or that we are as­signed the down­stairs to which to op­er­ate come the new school term. It is the safer area to op­er­ate and our stu­dents have been at home since No­vem­ber 2,” she said.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 160 pupils are at­tend­ing both schools.

Ex­press­ing alarm over the un­safe con­di­tions at the St Therese school, Rio Claro South coun­cil­lor David Law said the two-storey build­ing was built in 1947.

“There is no way they could do any tem­po­rary fix, quick fix, that may need an en­tire re­con­struc­tion of that school floor­ing at the up­per deck, al­so con­crete floor­ing, not patch­ing the floor­ing board.

“I share the pains of the par­ents and the PTA who have al­so been very adamant in get­ting the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Catholic Board to in­ter­vene ur­gent­ly,” he said.

Hope­ful that the min­istry would treat this mat­ter ur­gent­ly, Law al­so called on the min­istry to pay at­ten­tion to the Poole RC School build­ing which has been closed since 2019 af­ter a ge­ot­ech­ni­cal study found that the school’s foun­da­tion was be­ing un­der­mined.

At­tempts to con­tact Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Dol­ly Gads­by-Dol­ly on her cell­phone were un­suc­cess­ful.