Akash Sama­roo

Still dis­ap­point­ed with the con­di­tions at St George’s Col­lege, teach­ers have told the school’s ad­min­is­tra­tion they have un­til Sep­tem­ber 17 to get their act in or­der.

But Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly is seek­ing to as­sure them things will get bet­ter.

How­ev­er, the hum of the air con­di­tion­ing units at the back of the school near the lab­o­ra­to­ry block, cou­pled with the chat­ter of stu­dents could have giv­en the im­pres­sion all was fi­nal­ly well at the col­lege in Barataria yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, up­on clos­er in­spec­tion, it be­came clear some­thing was not quite right. At the front of the school, a teacher was con­duct­ing class­es not in a class­room but out in the open. The doors in oth­er class­room blocks were wide open with the fans in the rooms off, and some chil­dren at­tempt­ing to cool them­selves by flap­ping their text­books to gen­er­ate breeze.

Ini­tial­ly, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) said there was no elec­tric­i­ty in parts of the school. This was con­firmed by one teacher who spoke anony­mous­ly, while an­oth­er on­ly ex­claimed “Oh Lord!” when asked how con­di­tions were in­side.

The in­sti­tu­tion, which has been un­oc­cu­pied for al­most two years to fa­cil­i­tate re­pairs to its roof and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture, wel­comed stu­dents in Forms One and Two on Mon­day and Tues­day. Yes­ter­day, the rest of the school pop­u­la­tion re­turned. It had been hoped that by then, the school would have been in a state of readi­ness for a smooth restart to teach­ing the oth­er stu­dents.

TTUTA had ex­pressed pes­simism that this dead­line would be met and yes­ter­day, first vice pres­i­dent Adesh Dwari­ka lament­ed that their sen­ti­ment was cor­rect.

“It was not a state­ment I made just like that, I was look­ing at the vol­ume of work that need­ed to be done to al­low for cur­ricu­lum de­liv­ery and based on my ex­pe­ri­ence of 32 years as an ed­u­ca­tor, it would have been dif­fi­cult for that to hap­pen with the lim­it­ed re­sources that I am see­ing,” Dwari­ka said.

He told Guardian Me­dia there were still a pletho­ra of is­sues at the school, even af­ter $10 mil­lion was spent by the State to fix the is­sues.

“The rooms are very hot, and the teach­ers are start­ing to com­plain about the heat in the class­rooms, be­cause we have about 30 stu­dents in a class to­geth­er with the teacher. Some of the ACs are not work­ing...There are no phone lines for the school, no Wi-Fi and no school bell at this time,” Dwari­ka re­vealed.

He added that the lab­o­ra­to­ry class­rooms were still not ready for cur­ricu­lum de­liv­ery, as sev­er­al pieces of equip­ment were still in box­es.

When Guardian Me­dia was out­side the school’s com­pound, a truck ar­rived filled with desks and oth­er equip­ment. Some of these may have come from their for­mer tem­po­rary home at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Val­sayn cam­pus.

“TTUTA is ob­vi­ous­ly dis­ap­point­ed be­cause our is­sue is the health and safe­ty of stu­dents and teach­ers. How­ev­er, we had two years to pre­pare, we knew that we were com­ing across from UTT and yet due dili­gence was not done to en­sure the school was in a state of readi­ness for to­tal and safe oc­cu­pa­tion,” Dwari­ka ar­gued.

It’s why he said a let­ter was de­liv­ered to the school’s act­ing prin­ci­pal yes­ter­day, warn­ing that while they will be pa­tient, there will be a lim­it.

“We be­lieve in col­lab­o­ra­tion and giv­ing them some time. So the process will be fol­lowed and the staff rep would have in­formed the act­ing prin­ci­pal to­day in writ­ing of a time and date to ad­dress the is­sues. When those is­sues are not ad­dressed, fur­ther ac­tion will take place,” Dwari­ka said.

How­ev­er, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the school’s Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) said while they sym­pa­thise and want the best for the teach­ers, the re­al­i­ty is that there are many oth­er schools in a worse con­di­tion. “When they came in they said they will fix as they go along. This week was for them (stu­dents) to fa­mil­iarise them­selves with the school, re­mem­ber they have been away for al­most two years, so you just want them to get back in and to set­tle, and things will go on as time goes by,” PTA rep Cas­san­dra Singh ex­plained.

Mean­while, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Gadsy-Dol­ly sought to as­sure con­cerned par­ents and teach­ers that the school was still in the process of set­tling in.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “This aca­d­e­m­ic year, there are at least four schools set­tling in­to new lo­ca­tions. St George’s Col­lege is one of them. The Fa­cil­i­ties De­part­ment, MTS, and the con­trac­tors are still in­volved in the process and will pro­vide sup­port to the school un­til com­ple­tion.”