It’s like work­ing in a pen­i­ten­tiary. Armed guards pa­trol the com­pound dai­ly and staff have been told to use gloves when sep­a­rat­ing war­ring com­bat­ants to pro­tect against HIV/AIDS and oth­er in­fec­tious dis­eases.

This is the re­al­i­ty for teach­ers at a trou­bled sec­ondary school in the Barataria/San Juan area who claim they are forced to op­er­ate in a war zone.

The teach­ers spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty and asked that the school not be iden­ti­fied, not out of fear of pos­si­ble con­se­quences from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion but vi­o­lent re­ac­tions from their stu­dents.

One teacher said she was as­sault­ed by a male stu­dent on the com­pound af­ter she dis­ci­plined him for a mi­nor in­frac­tion. She was so trau­ma­tised by the ex­pe­ri­ence that she had to re­ceive coun­selling and was even­tu­al­ly trans­ferred out of the school.

In an0ther dis­turb­ing in­ci­dent, a Form Three stu­dent was raped in a se­clud­ed area at the back of the school.

The group of four teach­ers said they de­cid­ed to speak out about con­di­tions at the school fol­low­ing an­oth­er vi­o­lent in­ci­dent last Fri­day. They said a video of the in­ci­dent post­ed on so­cial me­dia shows a fe­male stu­dent throw­ing a rock and shat­ter­ing the wind­screen of a teacher’s ve­hi­cle.

The tar­get was a dean who had ear­li­er been heard ar­gu­ing with a stu­dent who had cut class­es.

“While the stu­dent is not overt­ly vi­o­lent, she is one who is un­der­hand­ed and will sit and plan for you,” one of the teach­ers said.

An­oth­er teacher who in­ter­acts with the stu­dent dai­ly, said: “This is not an en­raged child. She was heard telling the dean that she will do for her lat­er.”

The teach­ers claimed their ap­peals for the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion have been large­ly ig­nored be­cause “they on­ly want to make sure the school is open re­gard­less of is­sues.”

Ac­cord­ing to the teach­ers, there are al­so in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues at the school which floods every­thing it rains heav­i­ly al­though it is lo­cat­ed on a hill. There is al­so a rat in­fes­ta­tion.

The group said a teacher was re­cent­ly “man­han­dled” by stu­dents and af­ter her car was van­dal­ized twice by an­gry stu­dents, one of the teach­ers said: “I now rush to park in front the of­fice be­cause they once used a stone to let down my tyres and they keyed an­oth­er teacher’s car.”

An­oth­er com­ment­ed: “I hard­ly have stu­dents who come from a two-par­ent house­hold. They don’t know how to re­spond to love be­cause they don’t know what that is. Their dis­ci­pline is rough­ness and vi­o­lence.”

The teach­ers are con­cerned that crim­i­nal gang cul­ture has in­fil­trat­ed the school. There have been in­ci­dents where re­put­ed gang­sters have blocked the school gates and even lined the road wait­ing to ac­cost those who op­pose or dis­ci­pline their mem­bers.

The is­sues have been raised with the T&T Uni­fied Teacher’s As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the school who seemed to be over­whelmed by what is go­ing on.

They are ap­peal­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia to in­ter­vene and im­ple­ment hard-line mea­sures to pro­tect stu­dents and teach­ers.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, an Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry of­fi­cial said there has been a gen­er­al de­cline in school vi­o­lence but some acts are be­ing “per­pe­trat­ed by a hand­ful of stu­dents who are in­tent on be­ing dis­rup­tive and we do have to move to deal with it in a de­ci­sive man­ner.”

The of­fi­cial added: “While the Min­istry recog­nis­es the right of a stu­dent to an ed­u­ca­tion, that stu­dent does not have the right to de­prive oth­er stu­dents of their right to an ed­u­ca­tion, and if it means tak­ing them out of the sys­tem, we will have no com­pul­sion in re­mov­ing them for the greater good of oth­ers.”