Four schoolboys suspended for 7 days after fight on first day of school

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Af­ter spend­ing on­ly one day at school, four boys will spend the next sev­en days away from class af­ter be­ing sus­pend­ed fol­low­ing their in­volve­ment in a fight on Mon­day af­ter­noon.

But while the boys will be away from school, po­lice say they will not be left idle, as they will be re­quired to at­tend a youth de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme dur­ing their sus­pen­sion.

The boys, who are be­lieved to be stu­dents of North­east­ern Col­lege, San­gre Grande, were record­ed fight­ing out­side an­oth­er school on Ojoe Road.

Footage of the in­ci­dent was shared on so­cial me­dia, with many users ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment at the fact that school vi­o­lence con­tin­ued even on the first day of the new school term.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions via email to North­east­ern Col­lege yes­ter­day to ver­i­fy whether or not the chil­dren in­volved were in fact stu­dents of the school; how­ev­er, no re­sponse was re­ceived up to press time.

Po­lice stat­ed the four boys were sum­moned to the school with their par­ents and were is­sued sus­pen­sion no­tices by the school’s prin­ci­pal. As part of this no­tice, the boys were in­struct­ed to at­tend the San­gre Grande Sus­pen­sion Cen­tre for sev­en days.

“They would be un­der the su­per­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ty Of­fi­cer PC Fe­lix Per­sad un­der the TTPS’ Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing Youth De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme where they would be ex­posed to restora­tive, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive and con­flict res­o­lu­tion,” the TTPS spokesper­son con­firmed in her re­sponse.

The TTPS al­so said a re­port was made and that School-Ori­ent­ed Po­lice Of­fi­cers are as­signed to the school, with­out con­firm­ing which school it was.

DCP in charge of Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Ju­nior Ben­jamin, said he was dis­turbed af­ter see­ing the in­ci­dent, not­ing that of­fi­cers of the Com­mu­ni­ty-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Sec­tion will be in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

“First and fore­most, when you see those things, it’s al­ways dis­turb­ing. It’s not what you want to see on the first day back to school.”

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Michael Dowlath re­vealed that he re­ceived a re­port on the in­ci­dent and that it in­volved stu­dents in San­gre Grande, but opt­ed not to say which school. Dowlath added that dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion was al­ready un­der­way, fol­low­ing a con­fer­ence be­tween the par­ents, stu­dents and the school’s prin­ci­pal.

“The Schools Su­per­vi­sor III for the North East­ern Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict has been in­formed, and the Prin­ci­pal has rec­om­mend­ed an ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion.

“That rec­om­men­da­tion is sub­ject to the re­quired ap­proval process. A for­mal case con­fer­ence will be or­gan­ised, and fur­ther ac­tion will be de­ter­mined in ac­cor­dance with min­istry pro­ce­dures. The re­sponse must re­flect the ev­i­dence and each stu­dent’s in­volve­ment.”

Dowlath said he was dis­ap­point­ed that stu­dents were in­volved in vi­o­lence at the be­gin­ning of the new school term, not­ing that his fo­cus was now on pro­tect­ing those af­fect­ed while sup­port­ing the school to en­sure the mat­ter was ad­dressed “firm­ly and fair­ly.”

He al­so urged par­ents to do their part in co-op­er­at­ing with school of­fi­cials to en­sure any con­cerns in­volv­ing their chil­dren were dealt with, as he stressed that suc­cess re­lied on their re­sponse and part­ner­ship.

“Schools can­not do this alone.

“Firm dis­ci­pline and sup­port for chil­dren are not com­pet­ing pri­or­i­ties. Both are nec­es­sary to pro­tect stu­dents, sup­port teach­ers and keep learn­ing at the cen­tre of school life.”

Re­fer­ring to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s warn­ing to un­ruly school­child­ren and their par­ents be­fore the new aca­d­e­m­ic year to be­have them­selves, Dowlath said he was sup­port­ive of her stance against school vi­o­lence, not­ing that the Gov­ern­ment’s stance to­wards such in­ci­dents was clear.

“A pos­i­tive start to the school year and firm dis­ci­pline go hand-in-hand.

“The min­istry’s ze­ro-tol­er­ance po­si­tion is clear: vi­o­lence is un­ac­cept­able and must be ad­dressed.”

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Gra­ham Street, San­gre Grande, where North­east­ern Col­lege is lo­cat­ed, a par­ent of a Form One stu­dent said he was con­cerned about the in­ci­dent, not­ing that his son was hes­i­tant to re­turn to school yes­ter­day af­ter see­ing the fight on so­cial me­dia.

“He was scared to come back to school this morn­ing. I had to sit down and give him words of en­cour­age­ment and guide him to stay away from these things. It’s re­al­ly heart­break­ing to see some­thing like this hap­pen­ing, and on the first day of school of all days.

“What go­ing and hap­pen fur­ther on in the term if this is how they start­ing?”

The par­ent al­so urged the par­ents of the boys in­volved in the fra­cas to in­sti­tute stricter dis­ci­pline for their chil­dren, not­ing that such be­hav­iour was un­ac­cept­able.

“If that hap­pened to my son... my son is a lit­tle youth man, he’s not a big fel­la and when I saw that video yes­ter­day it raised my pores.

“So the par­ents of these stu­dents need to en­force some rules and reg­u­la­tions, take away some priv­i­leges be­cause that kind of be­hav­iour can’t be tol­er­at­ed at all.”

A res­i­dent in the area said that while he no­ticed a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in the num­ber of fights af­ter school since the in­tro­duc­tion of School-Ori­ent­ed Po­lice Of­fi­cers, he was still dis­ap­point­ed in the be­hav­iour of the stu­dents on Mon­day.

He called on po­lice to main­tain a more vis­i­ble pres­ence af­ter school.

“Pa­trolling the streets in their uni­form might in­stil some fear in some of them youths, but like they don’t have any fear.”