Camille McEach­nie

& Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Less than a month af­ter the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry al­lowed a phased in-per­son re­turn to class­es for se­lect­ed stu­dents, the Ma­son Hall Sec­ondary School in To­ba­go has been shut down af­ter a male stu­dent test­ed pos­tive for the COVID-19 virus. The school was closed yes­ter­day for sani­ti­sa­tion and con­tact trac­ing of the per­sons who may have come in­to con­tact with the stu­dent, who is in the Fifth Form and was en­gaged in lab ac­tiv­i­ty.

The Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, In­no­va­tion and En­er­gy con­firmed the pos­i­tive case yes­ter­day. This brought the pos­i­tive cas­es on the is­land to two af­ter the is­land had no re­port­ed cas­es for 30 days.

De­spite the in­ci­dent, how­ev­er, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (To­ba­go) of­fi­cer Bradon Roberts and some par­ents of stu­dents at­tend­ing the school said they were sat­is­fied with the school’s health pro­to­cols.

How­ev­er, he said in many in­stances, the stu­dents were the ones not fol­low­ing es­tab­lished pro­to­cols.

“Our con­cern is that with the big­ger schools, with less per­sons be­ing out, mon­i­tor­ing the space even be­comes more chal­leng­ing. You have the same space, so chil­dren can ven­ture in­to ar­eas of the school where you are not able to mon­i­tor.”

Roberts said the school, like oth­ers in To­ba­go, al­so had some “chal­lenges with in­fra­struc­ture for years,” not­ing “health pro­to­cols are more chal­leng­ing when you have to ma­noeu­vre around in­fra­struc­ture chal­lenges.”

How­ev­er, not­ing that teach­ers on the is­land were do­ing their best with what they had to work with, Roberts added, “The ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor has been lag­ging for far too long. Teach­ers and prin­ci­pals have been find­ing al­ter­nate ways to man­age and fill the gaps in re­sources. Stu­dents are turn­ing up to do labs, and they do not have gas run­ning through the lines. Yep, the teach­ers man­age to get the class­es done.”

Asked if it was a case of mis­man­age­ment of avail­able funds, Roberts an­swered in the neg­a­tive.

“All over this coun­try, we have the same sit­u­a­tion in pub­lic schools. In the de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools, things are dif­fer­ent.”

Some par­ents of stu­dents at­tend­ing the Ma­son Hall school al­so said they were “sat­is­fied” with the health pro­to­cols in place at the in­sti­tu­tion. While none of them want­ed to be iden­ti­fied, they said they are asked to take the chil­dren to school just in time for the class. Stu­dents are made to wear masks, sani­tise, fill out forms with their con­tact in­for­ma­tion, at­tend class­es and head back to ve­hi­cles that ar­rive for their pick up as soon as class is done, par­ents told Guardian me­dia.

“I am so sur­prised this hap­pened, as the school is do­ing its best to fol­low pro­to­cols and keep the chil­dren safe,” one par­ent of a Fourth Form stu­dent told Guardian Me­dia.

The moth­er said the school texted the par­ents ear­ly yes­ter­day, telling them stu­dents were not al­lowed on the school’s com­pound un­til fur­ther no­tice.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Di­vi­sion’s re­lease yes­ter­day said the school re­mains closed for sani­ti­sa­tion while the Di­vi­sion of Health said con­tact trac­ing had start­ed to de­ter­mine the num­ber of per­sons with whom the stu­dent came in con­tact.

At yes­ter­day’s COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh con­firmed the stu­dent’s fam­i­ly mem­bers and those who were in close con­tact with him are cur­rent­ly in quar­an­tine.

De­spite this lat­est sit­u­a­tion, how­ev­er, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says it will not de­rail plans for phase two of the re­sump­tion of phys­i­cal class­es next month.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day via text mes­sage, Gads­by-Dol­ly said it was an­tic­i­pat­ed that some­one would have even­tu­al­ly test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus at one of the schools. She said pro­to­cols were there­fore put in place to de­lin­eate its han­dling.

Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed that once the cas­es re­main low, the min­istry will go ahead with the phase two re­open­ing, which will see Stan­dard Five stu­dents re­turn to schools on April 12. On Feb­ru­ary 8, Forms Four to Sixth Form stu­dents re­turned to their class­rooms and the min­is­ter said based on feed­back she had re­ceived from stake­hold­ers at a meet­ing last week, these stu­dents were pro­gress­ing well with their ex­am prepa­ra­tions.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ents/Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Clarence Men­doza al­so said they had no ma­jor con­cerns re­gard­ing stu­dents’ health and safe­ty since their re­turn to school. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted there is a con­cern sur­round­ing the stu­dents af­ter school hours.

“In the af­ter­noon hours, I would have no­ticed some gath­er­ing by stu­dents and it is some­thing we have to look at in terms of the par­ents get­ting more in­volved and get­ting their chil­dren home,” Men­doza said.

Men­doza said the as­so­ci­a­tion will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion and be guid­ed by the ad­vice of the Min­istry of Health and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

But there is an­oth­er area of con­cern as it re­lates to the lack of re­sources.

“We con­tin­ue to have di­a­logue with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion on the Tech-Voc (Tech­ni­cal/Vo­ca­tion­al stud­ies) area in our schools up to par. We are short on teach­ers and equip­ment in Tech/Voc and these stu­dents who are Form Five need a bet­ter Tech/Voc area to get their stuff out,” Men­doza said, adding he hopes the prob­lem will be rec­ti­fied soon.

Sus­pect­ed case at Diego Mar­tin North

Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials are now mon­i­tor­ing a teacher at the Diego Mar­tin North Sec­ondary who is sus­pect­ed of hav­ing con­tract­ed the COVID-19 virus.

The teacher was re­port­ed­ly sent home to self quar­an­tine while await­ing test re­sults af­ter she ex­hib­it­ed symp­toms while on du­ty.

Re­spond­ing last evening to queries on the sta­tus of the teacher, con­tact trac­ing and oth­er pro­to­cols at the school, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said there had been no pos­i­tive con­fir­ma­tion just yet.

How­ev­er, she not­ed, “The stu­dents who in­ter­act­ed with the teacher in ques­tion are re­port­ed to have done so un­der the ap­pro­pri­ate safe­ty pro­to­cols.”

As­sur­ing there was no dis­rup­tion to the school’s op­er­a­tions at this time, she said, “We will of course mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion close­ly and take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion if the sit­u­a­tion changes.”

In a re­lease last night, the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) said it was aware of the sit­u­a­tion at two sec­ondary schools. It said it was in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with per­son­nel at the schools and had of­fered guid­ance on the mat­ters. TTUTA al­so not­ed that the min­istry had giv­en spe­cif­ic guid­ance on the num­ber of peo­ple al­lowed to en­ter school com­pounds dur­ing the cur­rent sys­tem. Not­ing it was re­strict­ed to CXC stu­dents prepar­ing for ex­ams and teach­ing and non-teach­ing staff as­so­ci­at­ed with help­ing those stu­dents, TTUTA called on school per­son­nel to ad­here to the num­bers.