Cedar Grove parents raise concerns over rodent issue

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

Par­ents of stu­dents at Cedar Grove Pri­vate School have raised con­cerns over the han­dling of a ro­dent prob­lem at the in­sti­tu­tion, al­leg­ing that dead ro­dents were found in­side school walls and that some stu­dents and teach­ers re­mained in class­rooms af­fect­ed by foul odours.

The con­cerns come as the school has closed for two weeks due to the is­sue.

Guardian Me­dia was con­tact­ed by con­cerned par­ents who claimed stu­dents were re­lo­cat­ed with­out their knowl­edge and that sani­ti­sa­tion ef­forts were ei­ther in­ad­e­quate or not con­duct­ed over the week­end.

Ad­di­tion­al al­le­ga­tions in­clud­ed poor garbage dis­pos­al prac­tices, an un­kept lot near the com­pound, rat drop­pings in class­rooms and the pres­ence of roach­es in the low­er school. Some par­ents al­so al­leged that re­peat­ed com­plaints from par­ents and staff were ig­nored by the school’s ad­min­is­tra­tion and board.

How­ev­er, Cedar Grove Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Board of Di­rec­tors pres­i­dent Michael Shand re­ject­ed sev­er­al of the claims, say­ing many of the com­plaints were “out­right wrong and false.”

He said the sit­u­a­tion was not an in­fes­ta­tion but an iso­lat­ed, acute ro­dent is­sue that was be­ing ad­dressed.

“If any dead ro­dents were found is be­cause we would have laid bait,” he said, ex­plain­ing that once dis­cov­ered, the ro­dents were re­moved safe­ly.

Shand al­so de­nied that stu­dents or teach­ers were re­quired to re­main in af­fect­ed class­rooms. He said the school con­ducts planned pre-oc­cu­pan­cy in­spec­tions and clean­ing ac­tiv­i­ties at the start of each day.

He said if drop­pings or odours are de­tect­ed, the af­fect­ed class­room is re­lo­cat­ed to an aux­il­iary space while in­ter­ven­tions are car­ried out to en­sure the en­vi­ron­ment is clean and safe.

He fur­ther re­ject­ed claims that no sani­ti­sa­tion was con­duct­ed over the week­end, say­ing teams worked through­out the pe­ri­od car­ry­ing out deep clean­ing, sani­ti­sa­tion and pest-con­trol treat­ments.

The school does not store garbage on its com­pound, Shand said, adding that waste dis­pos­al bins are lo­cat­ed on a near­by street. He al­so said the board had re­ceived no com­plaints re­gard­ing roach­es.

Re­gard­ing con­cerns about un­kept lots near the school, Shand said those lots do not be­long to the school, but ef­forts were un­der­way to have the is­sue ad­dressed.

He ac­knowl­edged there had been a com­mu­ni­ca­tion gap fol­low­ing the ini­tial dis­cov­ery of ro­dent drop­pings but said the board, which main­tains reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion with share­hold­ers, had since tak­en di­rect re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for up­dat­ing par­ents and stake­hold­ers.

In a state­ment, the board said pest-con­trol providers be­lieve the ro­dents’ pres­ence at the school was trig­gered by the re­cent clear­ing of a va­cant lot di­rect­ly op­po­site the cam­pus.

The board said a de­ci­sion to tran­si­tion to re­mote learn­ing took ef­fect on Tues­day af­ter a manda­to­ry in­spec­tion re­vealed con­tin­ued pest ac­tiv­i­ty around the com­pound, de­spite deep-clean­ing ef­forts car­ried out over the week­end.

It as­sured that it is work­ing close­ly with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Pe­nal Re­gion­al Health Cor­po­ra­tion and has en­gaged in­de­pen­dent spe­cial­ists to ad­dress the prob­lem.

Shand said the school is aim­ing to re­open with­in two weeks, al­low­ing time for the com­ple­tion of re­quired works fol­lowed by a mon­i­tor­ing pe­ri­od to en­sure the is­sue has been ful­ly ad­dressed and does not re­cur be­fore stu­dents and staff re­turn.