Scarborough Secondary to stay closed for extra week

Fifty-six of Tobago's 57 schools will open on Monday.

So said THA Secretary of Education, Research and Technology Zorisha Hackett at Friday’s virtual post-Executive Council media briefing at the Shaw Park Cultural Complex.

Hackett said it does not mean all the repairs at the 56 schools is complete,but the work would have been categorised into high, medium and low priority. She said high priority means the division would have dealt with ceilings and roofs, plumbing, electrical work and anything that might affect the health and safety of students.

Medium- and low-priority repairs, she said would not affect the reopening of schools.

She said she had constantly been going to the administrator and pleading with her, "being a former teacher myself in the same school that we’re having many of the challenges with, and understanding and being empathetic to the cries of my colleagues there."She said she had also constantly met with staff and the chief accounting officer of the division and insisted on meeting deadlines so the division could open all 57 schools on September 5.

She said in spite of that, challenges were encountered and it was decided all schools except Scarborough Secondary will open on Monday.

“It was not planned. You always expect the most positive outcome, and it did not happen."

She said she had advocated strongly to the Executive Council for emergency repairs to be done in the last month of the vacation.

"We went back and forth about it, but really and truly it would not have been structurally ready. We agreed instead of trying to push the work over the course of three weekends to get it done, that we would have the works completed by next Thursday into Friday.”

She apologised that one of the 57 schools would not be ready, but said, "We would be working with that school throughout the next week to ensure that they’re in a space of readiness – emotionally, a space where they feel reassured and comforted." Hackett said she would support the school so that when it opens on September 12 it would be "very ready to push forward for the next 14 weeks until the end of that first term.”

The Scarborough Secondary School has been in disrepair for some time. In 2019 students protested over the conditions and called for a new school to be built.

In an interview that year, the Prime Minister said the school needed to be relocated further inland because coastal erosion was threatening its foundations.

Then Education Secretary Kelvin Charles had previously said there were plans to build a new school and land had been identified. He did not say where, or whether the school would be renamed if or when it was relocated.

Responding to that, Hackett said the assembly is eyeing another site. At the site previously earmarked, there were some drainage challenges, she said.

“It is prone to flooding, and we do not want to engage in a project that is going to cost us a lot down the road."

She said the design will be rolled out very soon, as the division has been working with a committee on the brief. Thereafter, she said there would be some stakeholder consultations, and conversations are ongoing.