The Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion for the Point Fortin East Sec­ondary School is threat­en­ing to take ac­tion, if some­thing is not done about con­di­tions at the school, which it says are dan­gers to stu­dents and teach­ers, alike.

The school’s PTA wants to know whether the Min­istry—and by ex­ten­sion the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion—will be ad­dress­ing the many safe­ty is­sues at Point Fortin East Sec­ondary.

In a state­ment is­sued by the PTA this morn­ing, PTA pres­i­dent Ta­fara Lewis says the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has not com­mu­ni­cat­ed on what will be hap­pen­ing with the school. Ms Lewis says the Prin­ci­pal was con­tact­ed on Thurs­day morn­ing, but there has been no word since, as to whether any of­fi­cials from the Min­istry will be vis­it­ing the school.

Water damage because of missing or broken guttering

PFESS PTA

The PTA pres­i­dent re­ports that there was a small elec­tri­cal fire in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of­fice, this morn­ing. She notes that it hap­pened be­cause of the faulty elec­tri­cal sys­tem at the school, an is­sue which was iden­ti­fied in an OS­HA Re­port from 2019, as well as in a re­port by the PTA.

Uncovered electrical panel which can be accessed easily by students

PFESS PTA

Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment from the PTA of­fi­cials, an in­spec­tion was con­duct­ed by OS­HA in April 2019, which was a re-in­spec­tion to con­firm whether the find­ings from the first in­spec­tion con­duct­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2019, were ad­dressed.

The PTA of­fi­cials say the April 2019 Re­port stat­ed that on­ly 3% of the find­ings were ad­dressed at that time. This re­port states that the out­stand­ing items should be ad­dressed and a re­port on the sta­tus of the items should be sub­mit­ted to the OSH Agency with­in 21 work­ing days up­on re­ceipt of the let­ter. The let­ter is dat­ed Ju­ly 29th 2019 and the school said it was re­ceived on­ly last week.

The let­ter al­so states that the fa­cil­i­ty would be re-in­spect­ed with­in the next three months which should have been in Oc­to­ber 2020 (no re-in­spec­tion done to date).

The PTA says it al­so con­duct­ed an in­spec­tion of the school in Sep­tem­ber 2019 and com­piled its own re­port which cor­rob­o­rates most of the find­ings in the OS­HA Re­port, al­though it was un­able to cov­er all ar­eas of the school at that vis­it.

The school’s PTA said some of the is­sues iden­ti­fied in the re­ports in­clude:

1. Dam­aged and miss­ing ceil­ing tiles in some class­rooms such as: wood­work­ing & ma­chine shops, Blocks C, D, K and the au­di­to­ri­um. Sec­tions of the ceil­ing miss­ing on Blocks M and P.

Damaged ceiling sections

PFESS PTA

2. Wa­ter stains on the ceil­ing in­side some of the rooms such as Block P Tex­tiles, Blocks C, D and the Se­cu­ri­ty lunch room.

3. Gut­ter­ing sec­tions of Blocks O & P not se­cured.

4. No ex­trac­tor fans for fumes and smoke gen­er­at­ed by the stoves (home eco­nom­ics)

5. Poor house­keep­ing in the fol­low­ing ar­eas: Tech­ni­cal draw­ing, Wood­work­ing, Ma­chine Shop, Farm, com­put­er lab, block K and ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fice. On Thurs­day 9th Jan­u­ary 2020 mem­bers of the PTA ex­ec­u­tive fig­ure­head ar­eas and ev­i­dence of poor house­keep­ing was seen.

6. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 chairs in the Tech­ni­cal draw­ing room have no back rests (this was still the same as at 9th Jan­u­ary 2020)

One of the damaged and backless chairs students use

PFESS PTA

7. The fume hood in the Chem­istry lab was in dis­re­pair which pre­vents prop­er con­tain­ment and re­moval of vapours, gas­es and fumes in the lab.

8. The ex­trac­tor fans for the poul­try and rab­bit pens are not work­ing. The PTA warns this is a health haz­ard due to the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of dust and odours.

9. Ex­ten­sive dam­age to the ceil­ing of Block D. Fail­ure to ad­dress can lead to the ceil­ing col­laps­ing caus­ing in­jury to stu­dents and teach­ers. The PTA says this block re­mains in the same con­di­tion to date.

Block D floods when it rains

PFESS PTA