Camille McEach­nie

As some stu­dents from Forms Four to Six re­turn to in-per­son class­es and the low­er class­es con­tin­ue to at­tend school vir­tu­al­ly, the To­ba­go arm of Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion(TTUTA) says it is sat­is­fied that mea­sures have been put in place for the on­line class­es.

TTUTA To­ba­go Of­fi­cer Bradon Roberts urges teach­ers and stu­dents to fol­low COVID pro­to­cols, say­ing the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, In­no­va­tion, and En­er­gy has man­aged the im­ple­men­ta­tion of COVID pro­to­cols “quite well.”

How­ev­er, he lament­ed that To­ba­go’s stu­dents are dis­ad­van­taged be­cause of the state of the is­land’s sci­ence lab­o­ra­to­ries.

He told Guardian Me­dia TTUTA raised the is­sues in 2018.

He said Ma­son Hall Sec­ondary and the Pen­te­costal Light and Life in Scar­bor­ough have been re­paired.

How­ev­er, those in oth­er schools, like the Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary, need re­pairs ur­gent­ly.

Ef­forts to reach Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Marslyn Melville-Jack for com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion were un­suc­cess­ful.

Mean­while, the “al­ter­na­tive” Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett, the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP area rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Ply­mouth/Gold­en lane, sent out her back-to-school greet­ings via so­cial me­dia, telling chil­dren to put their best foot for­ward and aim to get a sol­id ed­u­ca­tion.

Hack­ett ad­vised par­ents and teach­ers to keep on striv­ing to do their best de­spite the pan­dem­ic and re­mind­ed them of Robert Schuller’s quote “tough times don’t last, but tough peo­ple do.”

She told par­ents to reach out to their chil­dren’s schools’ prin­ci­pal for help if they need elec­tron­ic de­vices. She said she is al­so there to lend a help­ing hand and will al­so reach out to the prin­ci­pals for them.

She be­gan her first “of­fi­cial” day at work yes­ter­day.

The PDP said they set up a par­al­lel Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil to meet the needs of their con­stituents. The par­ty has not been able to serve them since Jan­u­ary 28, 2021- their in­au­gu­ra­tion day.

The leg­isla­tive arm of the To­ba­go Ho­sue of As­sem­bly has not been ful­ly con­sti­tut­ed as the PDP and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, who won six seats each in the Jan­u­ary 25, 2021, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions could not agree on a Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer.

The PDP said the coun­cil would un­der­take small com­mu­ni­ty-based projects in­volv­ing res­i­dents and busi­ness­es.