Af­ter a lit­tle over two months in­to the new school term, par­ents of some stu­dents at­tend­ing spe­cial needs schools are wor­ried that soon they will not have a place to send their chil­dren.

This, they said, could be the re­al­i­ty if the schools did not re­ceive gov­ern­ment fund­ing that was due to them.

Mem­bers of the Pri­vate Spe­cial Schools As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go gath­ered out­side the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry yes­ter­day with the hopes of high­light­ing how dire their sit­u­a­tion was.

“We need some­one who will pick up our plight, who would take us se­ri­ous­ly be­cause in a sit­u­a­tion like this, there’s no one that we can talk to. The peo­ple that process our doc­u­ments, they are not the ones in charge of writ­ing the cheque for re­leas­ing the funds so there are oth­er en­ti­ties that we can­not reach that we are reach­ing out to,” Prin­ci­pal of Strate­gic Learn­ing and Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion In­sti­tute Su­san De Fre­itas said.

She said with­out fund­ing, the schools could not pay their staff and would ul­ti­mate­ly have to close.

“We can­not be treat­ed as though these chil­dren de­serve less,” she said.

Prin­ci­pal of Charis Works Chris­t­ian Acad­e­my, Lin­nea Sam­path-Chai re­ceived fund­ing but still showed up in sup­port of oth­er spe­cial needs schools. She said she had been with­out gov­ern­ment fund­ing be­fore and be­lieves that there need­ed to be more sen­si­ti­sa­tion on why time­ly fund­ing was nec­es­sary.

“We don’t want to be look­ing like we are al­ways fight­ing for mon­ey, but it takes a lot to run the schools and keep the chil­dren en­gaged and prop­er­ly pro­vid­ed for,” Sam­path-Chai said.

As­so­ci­a­tion mem­ber and Prin­ci­pal of Paideuo Learn­ing Cen­tre Ju­dith de Ver­teuil said there were on­ly so many fundrais­ers they could con­duct and the sub­ven­tion from the min­istry was crit­i­cal to their sur­vival.

“It means that you prob­a­bly have to close the school for a week or two, it means that staff have to stay home, which af­fects the teacher-to-stu­dent ra­tio—you can­not main­tain that when you don’t get fund­ing to pay the teach­ers to come out,” she said.

Par­ent of New Be­gin­nings Ed­u­ca­tion­al Cen­tre Si­mone Williams said she had been help­ing at the school as teach­ers could not af­ford to come out.

“It is chal­leng­ing to deal with those ten stu­dents at once, It will sound like a lit­tle bit of chil­dren but no, each child has a dif­fer­ent dis­abil­i­ty or learns dif­fer­ent­ly so to deal with them at the same time is chal­leng­ing—you have to be run­ning back and forth,” she said.

Par­ent Rox­anne An­toine who has a 12-year-old son at­tend­ing New Be­gin­nings in Pe­tit Val­ley said her son loved the school and she has seen his progress since he en­rolled in 2023.

“I am see­ing a dras­tic change in him; he has de­vel­oped a lot,” she said.

An­toine ex­plained that when she re­ceives the mes­sages stat­ing there is no school her heart breaks for her son. She plead­ed with the min­istry to hear their cries.

“Where the fund­ing for the teach­ers and them? Where is it go­ing, why is it al­ways so late, par­ents are fed up I have been go­ing through it since last year,” she said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said in a state­ment, “The Gov­ern­ment pays the tu­ition of el­i­gi­ble stu­dents whose par­ents have ap­plied for fund­ing at 13 pri­vate spe­cial schools. These are not Gov­ern­ment schools, and their clien­tele is a mix of pri­vate fee-pay­ing stu­dents, and stu­dents that the Gov­ern­ment pays for.  

“The schools have been paid for the last aca­d­e­m­ic year. Pay­ment for term one of the cur­rent aca­d­e­m­ic year is now due; it is not over­due. Pay­ment was al­ready made to five schools be­fore the end of the fi­nan­cial year in Sep­tem­ber.

“On­ly when the bud­get was passed could a re­quest have been made for the fund­ing to com­plete pay­ments to the oth­er schools. This re­quest was made and is be­ing processed.”