Melis­sa Doughty

In­ter­im pres­i­dent of the PTA of the Pt Cumana RC school Wendy-Anne Gar­cia has ex­pressed her heart­felt thanks and grat­i­tude to Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris. She said he was the on­ly one who stood up for par­ents and chil­dren in their fight to have their own school, as op­posed to in­te­gra­tion with the Pt Cumana Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry. "Our arch­bish­op stood up with us and made us proud...He is the on­ly one we can feel proud of," she said. Gar­cia al­so ex­pressed the com­mu­ni­ty's dis­ap­point­ment in MP and Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley. The stu­dents are be­ing tem­porar­i­ly re­lo­cat­ed to St Pe­ter's RC Church in Care­nage, the vil­lage to the west of Pt Cumana. When the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed, teach­ers and mem­bers of the church were busy putting chalk­boards, desks and chairs in place for the stu­dents' ar­rival on Mon­day. Prin­ci­pal Lester Tels­ford was there but de­clined to com­ment.

First year to Stan­dard Two will be housed in the church where­as stan­dards three to five will be housed in the ad­ja­cent Lynch (pro­nounced "Link") Hall. Gar­cia said when the par­ents of Pt Cumana RC School met with the Catholic board, "it was ac­tu­al­ly the par­ents who ad­vo­cat­ed where we want­ed to go. "We met with the arch­bish­op's rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the RC school com­pound," she said. "It was de­cid­ed that the chil­dren need to be taught and we got a place where they are to be taught, and we de­cid­ed to come down here to the church and to Lynch Hall to see if it had suf­fi­cient room. "We are very proud of the de­ci­sion the arch­bish­op made, be­cause af­ter what we were told by the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion on Mon­day night, we were very up­set, and we did not even know which di­rec­tion to go un­til we heard the morn­ing that he stood up for us as Catholics be­cause at the meet­ing the de­ci­sion was made, not even study­ing that it is a Ro­man Catholic school." Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Tim Gopeesingh met with the arch­bish­op at the lat­ter's of­fice at 8 am yes­ter­day to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

Af­ter­wards Gopeesingh said the meet­ing was very cor­dial and fo­cused on a res­o­lu­tion. "The min­istry wish­es to em­pha­sise that it is not dis­es­tab­lish­ing the ex­ist­ing Pt Cumana RC School. We are cur­rent­ly ex­plor­ing op­tions for ma­jor re­pairs of the ex­ist­ing build­ing, that is the Pt Cumana RC school build­ing, or con­struc­tion of a new one on the same site, but bear­ing in mind the con­straints of the ex­ist­ing land size." Gopeesingh said he and the arch­bish­op agreed that the Pt Cumana RC stu­dents will be housed at the parish hall for the the fi­nal three weeks of the cur­rent term.