With teach­ers threat­en­ing to boy­cott class­es on Mon­day, some stake­hold­ers are urg­ing them to act in the best in­ter­est of the stu­dents.

Con­cerned Par­ents Move­ment (CPM) pres­i­dent Clarence Men­doza yes­ter­day said he un­der­stands teach­ers’ frus­tra­tion over the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s four per cent wage in­crease of­fer. How­ev­er, he urged them to not lose sight of the strug­gles al­so faced by par­ents and stu­dents over the last two years.

“If your cost of liv­ing to­day is the same as 2001, then you are re­al­ly hun­gry and we know that teach­ers will stay away but stay­ing away wouldn’t have helped the sit­u­a­tion as it is, whether it’s 4%, 1% or 15%. Stay­ing away from school to rest and re­flect, I don’t think it will help our stu­dents and we are see­ing what has hap­pened to our stu­dents dur­ing the last two years. Teach­ers would have strug­gled to hold the fort. Par­ents would have al­so strug­gled and we are see­ing our stu­dents are strug­gling,” Men­doza not­ed.

Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent Kevin David al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the boy­cott threat.

“The NPTA is quite aware of the im­por­tance of wages and ne­go­ti­a­tions. How­ev­er, it is a very trou­bling time for all of our par­ents and more so for our chil­dren, who are ac­tu­al­ly re­cov­er­ing from at least two years of learn­ing loss,” David said.

He added, “We re­al­ly plead that some am­i­ca­ble de­ci­sion can be ar­rived at. We hope that some of that mech­a­nism can be used to get the de­sired re­sults our teach­ers do seek and at least not where our chil­dren will miss teach­ing time. And our teach­ers do play a very crit­i­cal part in this learn­ing re­cov­ery.”

Both the NPTA and CPM said their mem­bers had com­plained about in­fra­struc­tur­al works need­ed for some schools to be ready to re­ceive stu­dents next week.

Ac­cord­ing to Men­doza, re­pairs be­gan at some schools over four years ago and are yet to be com­plet­ed.

“Toi­let fa­cil­i­ties are need­ed at schools such as Pleas­antville and Cara­pichaima West and these are just one or two schools that I can call off the top of my head,” he said.

“We know the coun­try is in an eco­nom­ic bind at this point in time but we can still see the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion com­ing out to com­plete these re­pairs based on our bud­get al­lo­ca­tion that is com­ing for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. We hope that our Min­is­ter of Fi­nance looks close­ly at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in up­grad­ing some of these ar­eas,” he added.

David mean­while said there may be some schools not open­ing their doors next week due to on­go­ing works.

Men­doza al­so called for an ex­pan­sion of the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme, say­ing many par­ents have been des­per­ate­ly try­ing to make ends meet.

“Some par­ents are not work­ing be­cause of what’s tak­ing place. They are ask­ing that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and, by ex­ten­sion, Gov­ern­ment, look close­ly at the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme. We asked them to in­crease the break­fast for our chil­dren, which we know that most of our chil­dren come to school hun­gry so if the break­fast can be in­creased, and the lunch can be looked at, then we can have a bet­ter day in school for our stu­dents,” he added.