LEE AN­NA MA­HARAJ

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr. Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says 52 schools across the coun­try have been af­fect­ed by this week­end's in­clement weath­er.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via text mes­sages on Mon­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly said five schools were di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by the flood­ing, and four schools were af­fect­ed by land­slides. 

She al­so con­firmed that the weath­er has caused oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues in some school.

Schools af­fect­ed by di­rect flood­ing:

North Oropouche RC.

North Oropouche Gov­ern­ment

St. He­le­na Pres­by­ter­ian

War­renville TIA EC­CE

Bam­boo Set­tle­ment Gov't EC­CE

Schools af­fect­ed by land­slides:

Bras­so Ve­na­do Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry

Tal­paro RC

Mun­do Nue­vo

Mor­vant Laven­tille Sec­ondary

Clean-ups at schools are be­ing con­duct­ed where flood wa­ters have sub­sided.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, in cas­es where ac­cess to school com­pounds is com­pro­mised, the prin­ci­pals will con­tact par­ents di­rect­ly to alert stu­dents on whether or not they'll have class­es on Tues­day.

How­ev­er, un­less fur­ther ad­vised by the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, Gads­by-Dol­ly said that schools will re­open on Tues­day 29th No­vem­ber 2022. 

When asked about vir­tu­al class­es, Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) po­si­tion on vir­tu­al learn­ing.

"Some schools which are af­fect­ed by weath­er or oth­er is­sues do go in­to the vir­tu­al mode, but TTUTA's po­si­tion is that teach­ers' job de­scrip­tions should in­clude both phys­i­cal and vir­tu­al modes of teach­ing be­fore teach­ers should agree to do vir­tu­al teach­ing. That dis­cus­sion is on­go­ing with the CPO (Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer) right now. So, in the in­ter­im, teach­ers are will­ing to en­gage stu­dents on­line when re­quired, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly all of them do so," she said.