Jan­nelle Bernard

Se­nior Re­porter

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

The Gloster Lodge Mora­vian Pri­ma­ry School in Bel­mont re­mains closed as health and safe­ty con­cerns, in­clud­ing prob­lems with its sew­er sys­tem, con­tin­ue to af­fect the school com­mu­ni­ty.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and school of­fi­cials are work­ing to ad­dress the is­sues, but stu­dents have not yet re­turned to the class­room.

In Sep­tem­ber, Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Adan­na Trail said the struc­tur­al con­cerns were long­stand­ing and had pre­vi­ous­ly been brought to the min­istry’s at­ten­tion. She said par­ents and stu­dents were left in lim­bo, with no in­di­ca­tion of when class­es would re­sume.

When CNC3 vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day, the gates re­mained locked. One par­ent said the on­ly arrange­ment in place to sup­port teach­ing and learn­ing was a sys­tem for dis­trib­ut­ing and col­lect­ing school­work.

“It has work be­ing pro­vid­ed for them, where you come to the school, col­lect work for the chil­dren at home, and give it to them. This is me bring­ing back the work for the teach­ers. Now I come, there is no one here,” the par­ent said.

The par­ent said the arrange­ment did not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress fam­i­lies’ needs, par­tic­u­lar­ly those of work­ing par­ents un­able to stay home and su­per­vise their chil­dren’s stud­ies.

“The school right about now, I’m not sure what’s go­ing on, but I know well it’s ter­ri­ble. They need to get some­thing done with that be­cause my chil­dren home to­day and I have work to do, I have things to do and the chil­dren home,” said par­ent Ladisha Joseph.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter and is await­ing a re­sponse.