Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

Jer­ren Nixon, a for­mer na­tion­al foot­ball play­er, as a boy used to kick ball in the yard of the Low­er Mor­vant Gov­ern­ment School (LMGS), the pri­ma­ry school he at­tend­ed. To­day's Jer­ren Nixons would have it hard­er.The school­yard's pitch sur­face is rut­ted and crum­bling. A few weeks ago, a ten-year-old boy tripped in one of the ruts and bad­ly in­jured one knee. He got five stitch­es and still has to go to change his dress­ing once a week, the boy said.

He's not the on­ly vic­tim of the yard at the school on La­dy Young Av­enue, Mor­vant. School of­fi­cials have been com­plain­ing about it for some time now, a source at the school said. Stan­dard Five teacher Su­sanne Dun­can, the TTUTA rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the LMGS board, says she broke her an­kle in the yard three years ago. It cost her five months away from work.

When I vis­it­ed the school on Oc­to­ber 15, the yard was on­ly one of a num­ber of sore spots the school board pres­i­dent, my broth­er Den­nis Allen, point­ed out. Sev­er­al toi­lets don't work; mul­ti­ple flu­o­res­cent light bulbs are blown, leav­ing the build­ings gloomi­ly lit; there are ter­mites in the ceil­ing and holes in the roof.

The in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy room is locked up be­cause the school's in­tranet is down and the room's air con­di­tion­ing is not work­ing. The back of the school floods so of­ten a vir­tu­al al­lu­vial plain has formed, with weeds grow­ing in the bed of silt.The school, which or­di­nar­i­ly would have been sub­ject to re­pairs and re­paint­ing over the long hol­i­days, wasn't touched in 2013 by the Ed­u­ca­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ties Co Ltd (EF­CL)–prob­a­bly be­cause the school is sched­uled to be re­built.

On Fri­day, the EF­CL Web site still fea­tured the in­vi­ta­tion to ten­der. It is a de­sign and build ten­der re­quest, with a dead­line of No­vem­ber 16, 2012. Sources at the school say a ten­der has been ap­proved and plans drawn up by the con­sul­tant, Vikab En­gi­neer­ing. A con­trac­tor has been hired but the school has not seen its fi­nal build­ing plans yet.

The staff were ad­vised to pack up their be­long­ings since Jan­u­ary, 2013; in Oc­to­ber there were still box­es of teach­ing ma­te­ri­als stacked at the back of class­rooms. Shelves and desks are still la­belled with the names of the rooms they should be placed in af­ter mov­ing.

In a re­cent news­pa­per ad, Dun­can said, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry named LMGS as one of the schools al­ready un­der re­con­struc­tion. In fact, the school is list­ed in the 2009 Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme, a gov­ern­ment al­lo­ca­tions doc­u­ment, as be­ing un­der con­struc­tion.

LMGS prin­ci­pal Roopchan Ram, sit­ting at his desk la­belled "Of­fice" in black mark­er on mask­ing tape strips, de­clined to com­ment on the re­build and the move. He did say that the school was first opened in Au­gust of 1960 us­ing the pre-ex­ist­ing sheds of the Mor­vant Mar­ket, a post-World War II struc­ture. The lo­ca­tion gave rise to the school's nick­name, "Mar­ket School."

The school is still in those sheds, which are walled in with breeze blocks and BRC wire, the same walls I re­mem­ber from my own days as a LMGS pupil 35 years ago. Black­boards sep­a­rate the class­rooms in the up­per school; the noise lev­el dur­ing lunchtime, when I vis­it­ed, was mod­er­ate­ly deaf­en­ing. I could just imag­ine how loud it would get when class­es were in ses­sion.

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Vikab En­gi­neer­ing reached by tele­phone re­fused to iden­ti­fy him­self or give com­ment on when the re­build would take place. He re­ferred me to the EF­CL. Bar­ry Jonas, of the EF­CL, reached by tele­phone, al­so re­fused to com­ment. He re­ferred me to EF­CL cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Kha­dine Spencer; she did not an­swer the num­ber Jonas gave me for her.

Calls to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment al­so proved fu­tile. An uniden­ti­fied man who an­swered that call re­ferred me to Yolan­da Morales-Car­val­ho, the min­istry's me­dia co-or­di­na­tor, but she was not in of­fice on Oc­to­ber 25 when I called.I asked an­oth­er man, who an­swered the phone at the of­fice of the chief ed­u­ca­tion­al of­fi­cer, "Why is the school not be­ing re­built if ten­ders went out since last year?"

De­clin­ing to be iden­ti­fied, he replied, "I don't have the in­for­ma­tion. If I did I would have shared it with you."On­go­ing dis­cus­sions be­tween the PTA and the min­istry to tem­porar­i­ly re­house the school at an­oth­er lo­ca­tion have been in­con­clu­sive, Allen in­di­cat­ed.

Plans ranged from a sug­ges­tion that the school use the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre in Mon Re­pos, where, he said, peo­ple have been shot more than once, to the old Aranguez Ju­nior Sec­ondary com­pound, which is it­self an ac­tive con­struc­tion zone. There were sug­ges­tions that LMGS share an­oth­er pri­ma­ry school's com­pound on a shift sys­tem, or house the pupils at the near­by Rus­sel Lat­apy High School. Both of these were deemed un­ten­able.

The most ac­cept­able so­lu­tion to the prob­lem ap­pears to be hous­ing the school at the Church on the Rock, Mor­vant, Allen said.Pas­tor of the church, Rev Dr Ben­jamin Agard, did not an­swer a call to his cell phone on Oc­to­ber 25. How­ev­er, the church, on the La­dy Young Road, Mor­vant, would have am­ple space, would not en­dan­ger the pupils and staff, and would not dis­place or bad­ly in­con­ve­nience an­oth­er school.

When this move will hap­pen, or even if it will hap­pen at all, is a mys­tery. Mean­while, the staff and 300-plus pupils of LMGS sit in a kind of lim­bo. They can nei­ther plan for the year nor make re­pairs to their age­ing school. The ruts in the yard get deep­er and the weeds grow high­er and high­er.

Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni is a for­mer pupil of Low­er Mor­vant Gov­ern­ment School. Her broth­er Den­nis Allen is the pres­i­dent of its school board.