The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net  

STUDENTS who engaged in a sit-out at Colonel Hill High School in Crooked Island last week returned to school yesterday, Alfred Gray, MP for the area confirmed yesterday.

Last week teachers were in their classrooms, but students were not because Parent Teachers’ Association president Edith Bain had told parents to keep their children at home. “The school was not ready for use,” she had told them.

The school had been severely damaged by Hurricane Irene in 2011. There was major damage to the roof and some of the walls had collapsed. While the school was being repaired, classes were held at a guesthouse on the island.

Mrs Bain said faculty and parents were told at the beginning of the school term that repairs at the school had been completed and students could return. However, she said “the school was not ready for the children. The teachers were at the motel where the school has been housed for two years and at the beginning of this school year the teachers were instructed to move. When that was brought to my attention I wrote to the Minister of Education and copied to the Director of Education and District Superintendent asking them to let the teachers remain where they are because the school was not ready. The contractor was still working.

“The Ministry then sent an entourage of persons up here to investigate and they themselves determined the school was not ready,” she said.

“However, last week the principal got another directive, that they should leave and go to the school. By Monday the contractor was still feverishly working to get the school ready, doing work that could not be done while students were on campus,” said Mrs Bain. 

Mrs Bain added that in the decision she made she “had the support of every parent, all of them.”

She said: “The majority of the parents went to school last week and determined that the school was not ready. The bathrooms were not working, the electrician was still there on the premises, a person was still putting up the boards in the classroom. How could children be in that? There is still some mould and mildew in the classrooms, but the teachers are saying that they are ready for the students now so I’ve told the parents they could send the students.” 

The issues at the Crooked Island school came almost two weeks after classes at Stephen Dillet, Uriah McPhee and Carlton Francis primary schools in Nassau had started after being temporarily cancelled because of a variety of problems with the schools.