Stu­dents of the To­co Sec­ondary School are still at home af­ter the school was closed three week ago due to dam­age sus­tained by the 6.9 mag­ni­tude earth­quake in Au­gust.

The dam­age, added to the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion that had been oc­cur­ring for a num­ber of years as a re­sult of the in­sti­tu­tion's close prox­im­i­ty to the sea, have now ren­dered the school un­in­hab­it­able.

Par­ents and stu­dents are still await­ing in­for­ma­tion as to when the school will be re­opened, or where stu­dents will be housed in the in­ter­im.

PTA ex­ec­u­tive An­gel Tay­lor Dou­glas told the T&T Guardian that stu­dents in forms 4-6 were sup­posed to re­turn to school on Mon­day. They were told stu­dents would have been housed in the cur­rent pre­fab build­ings on the school’s com­pound for two days a week, a tem­po­rary plan sug­gest­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, on Mon­day the pre­fab build­ings still had not re­ceived the nec­es­sary elec­tri­cal re­pairs to ac­com­mo­date the stu­dents.

The school was in the spot­light as re­cent as Ju­ly 2017 when five of its past stu­dents, in­clud­ing Olympian Keshorn Wal­cott, were nom­i­nat­ed for First Cit­i­zens Sports Per­son­al­i­ty of the Year awards. Wal­cott, a gold and bronze medal Olympic cham­pi­on, emerged the win­ner.

A year lat­er, the school has been shut down with no es­ti­ma­tion as to when it will be re­opened.

To­co Sec­ondary has been in a state of dis­re­pair for some10 years. In 2012, the school was out­fit­ted with pre­fab build­ings which were sta­tioned in the front of the orig­i­nal school struc­ture. This was in­tro­duced as a tem­po­rary so­lu­tion af­ter the school be­gan to phys­i­cal­ly fall apart. Six years lat­er, the pre­fab build­ings have al­so be­come un­in­hab­it­able.

Ear­li­er this month dur­ing MP Lovell Fran­cis’ post-earth­quake school vis­its, he was in­vit­ed by the To­co Sec­ondary School PTA to view the school. The derelict school was deemed un­safe and sub­se­quent­ly closed.

“Giv­en the ex­tent of the dam­age from time and the en­vi­ron­ment which was wors­ened by the quake we had no choice,” Fran­cis said then.

Fran­cis in­di­cat­ed that as a re­sult of his vis­it, the school will be out­fit­ted with at least one ad­di­tion­al pre­fab build­ing to join the ex­ist­ing ones they were giv­en six years ago. He said he is cur­rent­ly await­ing in­for­ma­tion from the tech­nocrats on this case to give an es­ti­mat­ed time as to when they would be able to re­open the school.

Speak­ing on the is­sue, in­ter­im PTA PRO Abi­gail Charles said their long-term goal is to en­sure To­co gets a new school build­ing and that the tem­po­rary so­lu­tion of hous­ing the chil­dren in pre­fabs “pend­ing con­struc­tion re­mains tem­po­rary and not a per­ma­nent fix­ture.”

Charles is one of sev­er­al par­ents lead­ing the charge on be­half of the com­mu­ni­ty to en­sure To­co is no longer ne­glect­ed.

“We would like the pub­lic to know that To­co Sec­ondary is de­serv­ing of at­ten­tion like any oth­er school. Our sit­u­a­tion is dire and re­quires im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion and that all ef­forts must be made to give us a prop­er school,” she wrote in an email.

“The toi­let fa­cil­i­ty is di­lap­i­dat­ed, the sew­er sys­tem is dys­func­tion­al, the labs and class­rooms are hot and un­com­fort­able. The elec­tri­cal sys­tem is faulty and cor­rod­ed and there is the is­sue of bird in­fes­ta­tion. In essence, all the build­ings are lit­er­al­ly falling apart.”

Cur­rent­ly, there are no plans to house the stu­dents else­where in the in­ter­im while pro­vi­sions are be­ing made for the pre­fab build­ings and ac­cord­ing to Fran­cis, hope for a new school in the near fu­ture is dis­mal.

“It is be­ing dis­cussed but the is­sue is, of course, go­ing to be fi­nances. We have 107 in­com­plete schools all across the land­scape,” Fran­cis said of the sit­u­a­tion.