Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Class­es at the Cunu­pia Sec­ondary School are set to re­sume by Wednes­day.

This is af­ter the prin­ci­pal's of­fice was de­stroyed by fire on Sat­ur­day.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, a Form Four stu­dent and a gang of his friends broke in­to the school on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon and set fire to the prin­ci­pal's of­fice and ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices.

Fire of­fi­cers from the Ch­agua­nas Fire Sta­tion were able to con­tain the blaze to that wing of the school.

The at­tack is be­lieved to have been car­ried out as an act of re­tal­i­a­tion af­ter school of­fi­cials seized the boy's cell phone last Fri­day.

While a Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cial con­firmed that the school would re­open on Wednes­day, the of­fi­cial could not say what ac­tion would be tak­en against the stu­dents if they are found guilty of the act.

The of­fi­cial said in­ves­ti­ga­tions by both po­lice and school su­per­vi­sors for the dis­trict are on­go­ing.

The of­fi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, could not say how much it might cost to re­pair the of­fice or whether the re­pairs would be com­plet­ed by Wednes­day.

A sim­i­lar in­ci­dent took place at the El Do­ra­do East Sec­ondary School in March 2016, af­ter the sus­pen­sion of 21 stu­dents for de­viant be­hav­iour.

The T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day and spoke to sev­er­al res­i­dents in the area who called for a con­stant po­lice pres­ence out­side the school.

"There is a lot of vi­o­lence here every day; on a dai­ly ba­sis fights break out af­ter school," one res­i­dent said.

"They walk in front of your ve­hi­cles when you are dri­ving, they cuss and block the roads when you are try­ing to dri­ve out. If there was a con­sis­tent po­lice pres­ence they would nev­er be­have like this."

The res­i­dent said fights have be­come more vi­o­lent and co­or­di­nat­ed.

"There was some is­sue a few weeks ago where three boys blocked a maxi, opened the door, run in and start to beat an­oth­er boy. The maxi dri­ver had to in­ter­vene to save the boy...that is not nor­mal be­hav­iour. These chil­dren need some se­ri­ous guid­ance in their lives."