‘Failing grade’

SCHOOL gates may have reopened, but the Opposition says the Government’s back-to-school roll-out efforts were a failure marked by unrepaired hurricane-damaged classrooms and unsafe conditions for students and teachers. Speaking at a People’s National Party (PNP) press conference on Monday, Opposition Leader Mark Golding pointed out that it has been almost 11 months since Hurricane Melissa battered the island last October, yet, only 57 of the 688 schools damaged by the Category 5 storm were completely repaired, a fraction of the 313 that were labelled as severely damaged. He argued that the conditions under which students and teachers were mandated to return to school were unacceptable. “That is evidence of a fundamental failure on the part of the Government; a failure to plan a coherent strategy for addressing the problem of damaged schools. Why was the Jamaica Defence Force and its engineering core not fully integrated into the process? Why were the masterbuilders and the engineers of Jamaica not asked, out of a sense of civic duty, to help in the call for sorting out the problem that this hurricane left behind? “All we hear from the Government is that there’s not enough grade one contractors. It’s a planning failure on the Government. There seems to be no sensible, structured plan for addressing this matter,” chided Golding as he delivered his remarks at the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. Golding was supported by the party’s spokesman on education Damion Crawford, who charged that the Government failed to reconstruct schools on time, implemented inadequate mitigation strategies, and returned students and staff to unsafe learning environments. “The Government indicated that 99 per cent of schools were open, yet upon my observation, I would suggest a good 40 to 50 per cent of those are either not functioning appropriately, as it relates to teaching and learning, or indeed not safe. One of those who are intended on creating a narrative more than building a nation is the prime minister of Jamaica, who sought to ignore the three failures that happened and suggested that the students were getting ‘closer to nature’,” said Crawford. Outside of Hurricane Melissa damage, Crawford also charged that many school plants were in need of furniture and proper maintenance. Pointing to the September 1 death of a labourer at Balcombe Drive Primary and Junior High School in St Andrew, after a building and corridor section collapsed while being worked on, Crawford called for a five-year audit by the municipal corporations to ensure that all schools are optimally functional. “We are calling on the Government to seek refuge in all persons that are willing to help, and to ensure that they list, moving forward, the timelines that they expect for all 681 schools to become fully reconstructed and ready for student participation,” said Crawford. Meanwhile, Golding chided Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness for his comments regarding children learning under a tree at a school in St Elizabeth. Holness, who was speaking at the launch of the Jamaica Reconstruction and Resilience Oversight Committee (JAMRROC), acknowledged that students at some hurricane-damaged schools currently have no choice but to assemble under tents and trees. However, he argued that these “cooler”, outdoor environments can sometimes provide a more supportive setting for learning than classrooms that have become “unbearably hot”. Golding told the media briefing that the prime minister’s remarks would only be acceptable if teachers and students had willingly chosen to hold classes outside, rather than being forced to escape the heat of tents or classrooms in disrepair. He argued that Holness did not take into consideration the harsh realities of those still impacted by the hurricane’s damage. “Clearly the prime minister misspoke, but instead of acknowledging that, and with some humility saying he misspoke, [or] maybe he was taken out of context and he never intended to in any way diminish the severity of the situation being faced by these students, instead he doubled down and started to talk about hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that show the benefit of learning in nature. “That is a display of arrogance, which really we could do without, and I would just call on the prime minister to acknowledge that the remarks were inappropriate in the context of the struggles being faced by our students in these schools who have to be learning in the elements because they have no choice to learn in a classroom, and the Government needs to get its act together and sort out this situation,” declared Golding.