The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

A GROUP of angered teachers from the Thelma Gibson Primary School, led by Belinda Wilson, demonstrated outside the Office of the Prime Minister yesterday in response to ongoing workplace concerns with the school’s principal.

 Some teachers have been calling for the removal of Olivia Daxon since last month and have engaged in sick outs or in some cases, walked off the job in a show of frustration with the school official.

 Workers have said they will not stop agitating for Ms Daxon’s redeployment to another school until their demand is met.

“For weeks, we’ve been having problems at Thelma Gibson Primary School and we have tried every avenue to have the matter resolved and so this morning, we are here to meet with the prime minister so that he can cause this matter to be resolved in a timely matter,” said Mrs Wilson, president of the Bahamas Union of Teachers.

Mrs Wilson said at the root of the union’s concerns was “the leadership, the behaviour and conduct” of Ms Daxon, in whom, she claims, teachers have no confidence. 

 A dispute with Ms Daxon in 2019 at Carlton Francis Primary School, where she was formerly deployed, triggered a Supreme Court case, Mrs Wilson said.

 “That is still sub judice, so we have gone to the Labour Department, we have written to the minister of education and we have written to the permanent secretary and we have had several meetings and this matter has not been resolved,” the BUT president stressed.

 “So, we came here this morning in a silent protest so the prime minister would note that when Belinda Wilson speaks, she speaks for this member and this morning I am speaking for Thelma Gibson Primary School teachers and we want a resolution to this matter and we are of the view that the resolution is the removal of the principal.”

 The BUT has been going head-to-head with the school’s principal in recent weeks, but relations between the parties further deteriorated last month after an alleged argument between the principal and a teacher.

 Their standoff with the school principal continued following her return to the campus last week following the alleged altercation.

 “The Ministry of Education has sought relief for us with the Department of Labour and the director of labour was in a series of meetings not only with me and the teachers and the legal counsel and we feel as though the Department of Labour has done their part,” Mrs Wilson also said.

 “However, the Ministry of Education has not done its due diligence because there are some matters that pertain specifically to what education has remit of and those matters have not been addressed and tomorrow (Wednesday) will make seven days since we had the last meeting.

 “And we don’t believe that Ms Daxon returning to Thelma Gibson must just be business as usual.”

 Asked yesterday what happens next if the matter isn’t resolved, the BUT head said members will exhaust every avenue, whether “industrial or legal” until they get satisfactory results.

 On Monday, Stephen McPhee, president of the Bahamas Educators Managerial Union (BEMU) which represents school principals and other senior education officers, expressed disappointment in what he called a “witch hunt” launched against Ms Daxon and called for cooler heads to prevail.

 He also said much of what was being reported by the union about Ms Daxon was either misleading or false information.

 “If they claim there is some wrongdoing being done, then I have no challenge with as I thought would’ve happened that the BUT president would show up to a meeting with the president of BEMU and the employer, the director or whoever else, let us sit down as adults and if you have some claims, then let us address it in accordance with your industrial agreement,” he said.