Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTUTA) To­ba­go Of­fi­cer, Bradon Roberts, is plead­ing with the THA Ed­u­ca­tion Di­vi­sion to pro­tect teach­ers and stu­dents at Scar­bor­ough RC School, af­ter a nine-year-old boy’s ag­gres­sive out­burst forced a lock­down on Tues­day.

Par­ents said it wasn’t the first time the child had dis­played such be­hav­iour, but Tues­day’s in­ci­dent was a break­ing point for teach­ers, who stayed away from school yes­ter­day. Stu­dents were sent home af­ter be­ing told teach­ers were ab­sent.

The boy al­leged­ly choked an­oth­er stu­dent dur­ing an al­ter­ca­tion and then be­came un­con­trol­lable, prompt­ing the prin­ci­pal to in­struct all teach­ers to lock them­selves and their stu­dents in their class­rooms. Par­ents were lat­er asked to pick up their chil­dren from school.

Roberts said he had re­ceived re­ports that the child may have tak­en a flam­ma­ble sub­stance to school to start a fire. He said oth­er re­ports sug­gest a teacher was as­sault­ed dur­ing the al­ter­ca­tion.

Par­ents are call­ing for the child to be re­moved for psy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tion and Roberts said au­thor­i­ties must al­so in­ves­ti­gate the un­der­ly­ing caus­es of the child’s ag­gres­sive be­hav­iour.

“I would make a call for mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion but I’m not so op­ti­mistic about it. What is mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion in T&T is a talk show. If you look at the JSC and the re­view of our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, the depth of the con­ver­sa­tion doesn’t show our pol­i­cy­mak­ers are se­ri­ous. When you look at Ma­son Hall Sec­ondary School and the gang vi­o­lence and the vi­o­lence tak­ing place in the school, we need to have per­sons on the ground,” he said.

Roberts ac­cused Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine and Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett—both for­mer teach­ers—of be­ing out of touch with the con­cerns and needs of teach­ers.

He warned that if the in­ci­dent is ig­nored, as hap­pened with pre­vi­ous com­plaints, the out­come may be re­gret­table.

Roberts said teach­ers had raised con­cerns about the stu­dent, who has a his­to­ry of ag­gres­sive and un­con­trol­lable be­hav­iour.

“The young man has his chal­lenges and we need to ad­dress his chal­lenges, not just those of the school. Every­one needs to be treat­ed with and I trust the di­vi­sion will do the need­ful,” he said.

He said there were com­plaints about the child at an­oth­er school be­fore he was trans­ferred to Scar­bor­ough RC.

“I know Scar­bor­ough RC didn’t want to take him in but he is a hu­man be­ing and we can­not put such per­sons in a dun­geon and cast them away. There must be a sys­tem in place to ad­dress it. The di­vi­sion did promise to pro­vide the school with sup­port but what we are see­ing to­day, it’s not enough.”

A par­ent, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said, “He pick­ing up knife for chil­dren, break­ing bot­tle for the chil­dren to run on. He throw­ing down things. He’s men­tal­ly un­sta­ble. He’s like a rag­ing bull, jump­ing over the fence to get an ob­ject to go back in the school to dam­age school. That boy needs to leave that school.”

An­oth­er par­ent, whose child was di­rect­ly af­fect­ed, said her child ex­pe­ri­enced an asth­ma at­tack dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

“When I came, my son was in a state and I didn’t get any in­for­ma­tion on what cause it. Af­ter talk­ing with him, I un­der­stand there was a brawl at the school,” she said.

Some par­ents said the teach­ers’ de­ci­sion to stay away from school was un­ac­cept­able but oth­ers praised them for tak­ing a stand.

One par­ent said he would be trans­fer­ring his chil­dren from the school out of an abun­dance of cau­tion.

Snr Supt Earl Elie con­firmed that an in­ci­dent at the school in­volv­ing two chil­dren had been brought un­der con­trol. How­ev­er, par­ents say they are deeply con­cerned about the safe­ty of stu­dents and staff.

It re­mains un­clear what steps ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials will take to ad­dress the con­cerns raised by teach­ers and par­ents.

Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett could not be reached for com­ment on the in­ci­dent yes­ter­day.