A great school pro­file can im­press prospec­tive par­ents, at­tract the best teach­ers, and even pro­vide the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty with a much-need­ed boost. How­ev­er, the op­po­site will be achieved if there is no in­vest­ment in a par­tic­u­lar in­sti­tu­tion so that it be­comes the last op­tion for both stu­dents and par­ents, and its com­mu­ni­ty ap­peal will slow­ly dwin­dle as has been the case at Tu­na­puna Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School (TGSS).

Es­tab­lished in 1962 with class­es from Forms One to Five, TGSS can boast of hav­ing a rep­u­ta­tion as one of the bet­ter per­form­ing gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools along the East/West Cor­ri­dor.

Hold­ing its aca­d­e­m­ic head high as they face the many chal­lenges head-on, the 57-year-old school—sit­u­at­ed a stone’s throw away from Hillview Col­lege—con­tin­ues to pro­duce top per­form­ers, out­stand­ing per­son­al­i­ties, pos­i­tive con­trib­u­tors to so­ci­ety and pub­lic fig­ures such as Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus and for­mer trans­port min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj among oth­ers.

De­spite the aged in­fra­struc­ture, the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion has grown through­out the years.

And while the school has con­tin­ued to limp along in spite of the ne­glect and lack of fund­ing, school of­fi­cials, par­ents, and past pupils have vowed not to give up.

'Short­chang­ing our chil­dren'

Pres­i­dent of the Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) Shir­ma Maraj ex­pressed deep dis­ap­point­ment as she lament­ed, "We are short­chang­ing our chil­dren. Our kids are the fu­ture and the school does very well on all fronts in­clud­ing sport­ing and aca­d­e­mics."

The list of woes plagu­ing the ter­mite-rid­den school in­cludes small class­rooms; im­prop­er ven­ti­la­tion; rot­ted floors and doors; the ab­sence of a prop­er staff room; no sick bay; no au­dio-vi­su­al room; no au­di­to­ri­um; a cramped li­brary; no air-con­di­tion­ing units in the class­rooms; on­ly two sci­ence labs for the en­tire school.

In­di­cat­ing the PTA was al­ways will­ing to as­sist wher­ev­er they could, Maraj said, "We are over­whelmed be­cause we have to do re­pairs all the time and we al­ways have to keep ask­ing par­ents to do­nate and give of their time to ef­fect these re­pairs where pos­si­ble.

"The class­rooms are so hot. The teach­ers are frus­trat­ed and the stu­dents can­not fo­cus and are dis­tract­ed…it is ap­palling."

Their lat­est ef­forts in­clud­ed re­fur­bish­ment of the mu­sic room, the re­place­ment of the floor­ing through­out the Form One class­es, and the re­moval of ven­ti­la­tion blocks re­placed by lou­vres for im­proved air flow.

Their cur­rent woes al­so in­clude a mal­func­tion­ing wa­ter pump which needs to be re­placed im­me­di­ate­ly. A re­cent movie-night fundrais­er was host­ed to gen­er­ate funds to as­sist in this area.

Maraj said the re­wards have been worth­while as the stu­dents con­tin­ue to ex­cel. She claimed that dur­ing the last five years the pass rate has been be­tween 78 to 86 per cent at the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tion.

Maraj said ef­forts over the past 20 years to in­tro­duce a Form Six had proven fu­tile.

"Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 85 per cent of our stu­dents nor­mal­ly get five or more pass­es at CSEC, some get dis­tinc­tions and they go on to oth­er schools and when they get schol­ar­ships…those schools get the recog­ni­tion, not TGSS," she said.

Al­though she de­scribed TGSS as a "qui­et and hum­ble school", she said this was a de­mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tor to both the staff and stu­dent pop­u­la­tion.

Mean­while, Maraj is wor­ried as the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has man­dat­ed that all sec­ondary schools pre­pare them­selves by 2020 for ex­ams to be post­ed on­line. "The school is old, it is not prop­er­ly wired and they are not ready."

Ques­tion­ing how long this "patch­ing up" could con­tin­ue, she said an ide­al so­lu­tion would be for them to be giv­en a new school.

Maraj does not be­lieve pick­et­ing or protest­ing is the ide­al so­lu­tion as she plead­ed, "Please some­body, we need help."

'The school has pro­duced so many good pro­fes­sion­als'

Asked how he would be able to as­sist in per­haps es­tab­lish­ing the school's alum­ni, Ma­haraj said he and some for­mer class­mates had been meet­ing reg­u­lar­ly to dis­cuss how they could go about help­ing their al­ma mater.

Hav­ing demit­ted of­fice in 2015, Ma­haraj said re­quests for the school to be re­paint­ed and for the es­tab­lish­ment of a Form Six block had been passed to then ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh who in­di­cat­ed it would have been in­clud­ed in the next year’s Bud­get.

He said, "I am very fa­mil­iar with the sys­temic de­cay of TGSS be­cause I pass the school every day on my dai­ly route. It is un­for­tu­nate be­cause the school has pro­duced so many good pro­fes­sion­als. In my year, it pro­duced an avi­a­tion en­gi­neer, a doc­tor and oth­ers who per­formed very well."

To those who be­lieve TGSS should be writ­ten off, both Maraj and Ma­haraj protest­ed against it as they ap­pealed to past stu­dents to stand up and let their voic­es be heard for a new and im­proved fa­cil­i­ty so it can con­tin­ue the good work for which it has be­come known.

Bap­tiste-Primus wants all past pupils to come on board

Vow­ing to do every­thing she can to as­sist in re­turn­ing TGSS to its for­mer glo­ry, Bap­tiste-Primus ex­pressed pride as she re­called ear­ly days at her al­ma mater.

Hav­ing vis­it­ed the school in Sep­tem­ber 2018 to ad­dress the new stu­dent in­take, she learned of the many is­sues af­fect­ing the school.

Re­veal­ing she had ex­pe­ri­enced a sense of de­ja vu when she en­tered the com­pound at Tay­lor Street, El Do­ra­do Road, the min­is­ter said noth­ing had changed.

Dur­ing that vis­it, Bap­tiste-Primus un­der­took to work with the prin­ci­pal and vice prin­ci­pal to pro­vide some much-need­ed fur­ni­ture to the school. Con­firm­ing that this on­ly re­cent­ly con­clud­ed, she ex­pressed sup­port for the ef­forts by the PTA to es­tab­lish a Sixth Form at the school.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the PTA had com­plet­ed some in-depth work to as­cer­tain ex­act­ly how much it would cost to ac­quire, re­fur­bish and out­fit con­tain­ers to be used, she said, "I share the de­sire to see TGSS at­tain its for­mer stand­ing. I would agree with mak­ing a call for them to con­tact the prin­ci­pal in the first in­stance, in­di­cat­ing in what area they would be able to as­sist the school.

"This is a good school and with the es­tab­lish­ment of a Sixth Form, we know we are go­ing to at­tract a lot more stu­dents who can make a con­tri­bu­tion to the school and there­fore, I am pre­pared to sit and work with them."

She ap­pealed to all past pupils of TGSS to come on board. "We all have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as this is the school that re­al­ly as­sist­ed us in lay­ing the foun­da­tion for the kind of fu­ture that we are all en­joy­ing. Let us all bring our col­lec­tive en­er­gy to help in re­build­ing this school."

Any­one wish­ing to as­sist can call 662-4718.