KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy says it al­lo­cat­ed mil­lions of dol­lars to the Pen­te­costal Light and Life Foun­da­tion Mul­ti­fac­eted Schools dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when there were lim­it­ed phys­i­cal class­es.

And af­ter the foun­da­tion closed its Pen­te­costal Light and Life Foun­da­tion High School last Fri­day due to in­fra­struc­tur­al de­fi­cien­cies, the di­vi­sion plans to au­dit all de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools in To­ba­go.

Just three days in­to the new school term, the foun­da­tion said its school would be closed in­def­i­nite­ly, as 23 of its 27 teach­ers had left be­cause of health and safe­ty con­cerns.

At the THA’s post- Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil me­dia brief­ing on Thurs­day, Di­vi­sion Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett pro­vid­ed fi­nan­cial de­tails of fund­ing to the foun­da­tion.

On Au­gust 1, 2001, the di­vi­sion be­gan a re­la­tion­ship with the foun­da­tion for its preschool, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. There was no fi­nan­cial re­la­tion­ship be­tween the di­vi­sion and the foun­da­tion for the first three years based on Hack­ett’s re­search. How­ev­er, she said from 2004 to the present, there were dis­burse­ments to the foun­da­tion for every term be­tween Oc­to­ber and June.

For the 2019/19 school year, the di­vi­sion is­sued $1.9 mil­lion. In the 2019/20 pe­ri­od, when the Gov­ern­ment shut down schools at the on­set of the pan­dem­ic, the di­vi­sion al­lo­cat­ed an­oth­er $1.9 mil­lion and $550,820 in ar­rears for a pre­vi­ous­ly missed pe­ri­od. An­oth­er $1.9 fol­lowed dur­ing 2020/21.

It con­tin­ues in this cur­rent school year, with the di­vi­sion al­lo­cat­ing $635,940 for the first term, with the sec­ond pay­ment of $637,071 card­ed for May.

The funds are for prac­ti­cal sub­jects, sports, main­te­nance of grounds and premis­es and the re­fund for util­i­ty pay­ments. With the school un­able to host chil­dren last week, Hack­ett said it ex­posed the need for au­dits of schools.

Gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed schools must ac­count for funds it gets from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion or the di­vi­sion un­der the Con­cor­dat. The Con­cor­dat is an agree­ment be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and boards of var­i­ous de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools that reg­u­lates op­er­at­ing terms and con­di­tions. It ad­dress­es is­sues like gov­ern­ment fund­ing, teacher se­lec­tion and the right of boards to al­lo­cate 20 per cent of the spaces in their first forms to se­lect­ed stu­dents.

Hack­ett said the di­vi­sion went above board to sup­port the foun­da­tion and oth­er de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools on the is­lands.

She said when she and As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Or­lan­do Kerr took charge of the di­vi­sion, they met the pay­ment sys­tem in place and con­tin­ued it in good faith. How­ev­er, based on last week’s clo­sure and re­cent de­vel­op­ments, she said the di­vi­sion could not con­tin­ue this way.

“The Pen­te­costal Light and Life Foun­da­tion High School, just like our oth­er two de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools, will have to be au­dit­ed. A gen­er­al au­dit­ing of the THA is cur­rent­ly on its way and we are go­ing to add these de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools to the fray,” Hack­ett said.