School bells ring but concerns linger in South Trinidad

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

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Amid smiles and ner­vous glances across South Trinidad yes­ter­day, chil­dren re­turned to school, some rac­ing to greet old friends while first-time pupils clung a lit­tle tighter to par­ents who were not quite ready to let go.

But for some fam­i­lies, the ex­cite­ment of a new school term was tem­pered by traf­fic con­ges­tion, tem­po­rary class­room arrange­ments and un­fin­ished prepa­ra­tions. At one school, teach­ers were still clean­ing while stu­dents wait­ed at a near­by church.

At San Fer­nan­do Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist Pri­ma­ry School, the first day of class­es be­gan with teach­ers and staff prepar­ing the build­ing while stu­dents re­mained at the ad­ja­cent Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist Church. The school had been closed af­ter an Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) pro­hi­bi­tion no­tice was is­sued near the end of the last term. Its re­open­ing yes­ter­day brought dif­fer­ing ac­counts over the con­di­tion of the build­ing and its readi­ness to ac­com­mo­date stu­dents.

Of­fi­cials from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) who vis­it­ed the school said they ob­served teach­ers car­ry­ing out clean­ing du­ties.

Sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent Nigel Fi­garo said on­ly a lim­it­ed scope of work had been com­plet­ed to ad­dress the is­sues that re­sult­ed in the pro­hi­bi­tion no­tice and that oth­er con­cerns re­mained un­re­solved.

“We found a very lim­it­ed scope of works that was done, and it was ba­si­cal­ly the works that were nec­es­sary to clear the pro­hi­bi­tion no­tice,” Fi­garo said.

Among the is­sues he iden­ti­fied were non-func­tion­ing air-con­di­tion­ing units on the up­per floor, a lin­ger­ing musty smell linked to pre­vi­ous mould con­cerns and a room that ap­peared to be show­ing signs of crack­ing. Fi­garo al­so point­ed to a con­crete eave sup­port­ed by a post which, he said, ap­peared bent un­der the weight it was car­ry­ing.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing that he was not an en­gi­neer, Fi­garo said the Min­istry of Works had in­di­cat­ed that the build­ing had out­lived its use­ful life.

He ar­gued that the sit­u­a­tion re­flect­ed a broad­er prob­lem with school in­fra­struc­ture, where re­pairs were of­ten re­ac­tive rather than part of a com­pre­hen­sive plan to ad­dress age­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

“We are not in the busi­ness of shut­ting down schools. We are in the busi­ness of en­sur­ing that our teach­ers and our stu­dents are in a safe en­vi­ron­ment,” he said.

The school’s board, how­ev­er, main­tained that the is­sues that led to the clo­sure had been ad­dressed.

Pas­tor Leslie Moses, chair­man of the board of the South Caribbean Con­fer­ence Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist school sys­tem, said con­sul­tants and con­trac­tors had reme­died the prob­lems iden­ti­fied by OSH. He added that an OSH in­spec­tor vis­it­ed the school last Fri­day and ap­proved its re­open­ing, al­though the of­fi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion was ex­pect­ed to be de­liv­ered yes­ter­day.

“The OSH Agency in­spec­tor was here on Fri­day, in­spect­ed the place and gave us the clear­ance,” Moses said.

Moses ac­knowl­edged that con­trac­tors were still on site com­plet­ing mi­nor works but in­sist­ed that these would not in­ter­fere with the school’s op­er­a­tions.

TTUTA in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fi­cer Ker­ry Brooms, how­ev­er, said the union had not re­ceived of­fi­cial doc­u­men­ta­tion con­firm­ing that the pro­hi­bi­tion no­tice had been lift­ed.

“That is not how the law op­er­ates,” Brooms said.

While ques­tions about readi­ness per­sist­ed at San Fer­nan­do SDA, par­ents af­fect­ed by the tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion of Grant Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School stu­dents faced a dif­fer­ent chal­lenge on the first day: traf­fic.

Stu­dents from First Year to Stan­dard Three were re­lo­cat­ed to St Paul’s An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School af­ter Grant Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry was deemed un­safe.

The stu­dents were ac­com­mo­dat­ed in St Paul’s au­di­to­ri­um, adding to traf­fic vol­umes in an al­ready con­gest­ed school dis­trict that in­cludes three oth­er schools on the same block and an­oth­er near­by school ac­ces­si­ble via Todd Street.

As par­ents con­verged on the area yes­ter­day morn­ing, sur­round­ing roads quick­ly be­came clogged. For­mer Point Fortin MP and Grant par­ent Kennedy Richards Jr ex­pe­ri­enced the de­lays.

“I spent pos­si­bly 15 min­utes to dri­ve 15 me­tres,” Richards said.

He warned that the con­ges­tion could be­come a dai­ly is­sue and called on prin­ci­pals, the dis­trict su­per­vi­sor and the Traf­fic Man­age­ment Branch to de­vel­op a co­or­di­nat­ed traf­fic plan.

The con­trast­ing ex­pe­ri­ences re­flect­ed the un­even start to the new school term in South Trinidad, even as many oth­er schools re­opened with­out in­ci­dent.

For stu­dents, the day was marked by re­unions with friends, new uni­forms and the ex­cite­ment of a fresh be­gin­ning. For par­ents and teach­ers, how­ev­er, the re­turn to school al­so meant nav­i­gat­ing tem­po­rary arrange­ments, traf­fic chal­lenges and lin­ger­ing con­cerns about pre­pared­ness.