An­na-Lisa Paul

Al­though the Rose Hill RC Pri­ma­ry School in Laven­tille will re­open to­mor­row, it is un­cer­tain just when phys­i­cal class­es will re­sume, as both staff and pupils will re­ceive coun­selling and ther­a­py ses­sions aimed at im­prov­ing their men­tal dis­po­si­tion and emo­tion­al well-be­ing in the wake of the shoot­ing in­ci­dent that led to its clo­sure last week.

This was the word from act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob and Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) CEO Sharon Man­groo yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing a meet­ing where strate­gies for the school’s re­open­ing were ad­dressed at the Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd (Cam­sel) in Port-of-Spain.

Ja­cob said, “We recog­nise there is some work to be done as it re­lates to the men­tal and psy­cho­log­i­cal as­pect per­tain­ing to the teach­ers and when that is done, the board, to­geth­er with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, will de­cide whether or not they will, in fact, open the school on Wednes­day...or if they open on Wednes­day, it might be deal­ing with the whole as­pect of ther­a­py con­cern­ing the stu­dents and the teach­ers when the school is re­opened.”

Staff and pupils have re­mained at home since Oc­to­ber 31, fol­low­ing a shoot­ing in­ci­dent be­tween war­ring gangs in which gun­fire was heard echo­ing through the hills of Laven­tille and en­vi­rons.

A two-minute video of the hor­ri­fy­ing and heart-break­ing re­ac­tion by the staff and pupils dur­ing the gun­fire was post­ed to so­cial me­dia. In the record­ing, pupils were seen ly­ing un­der ta­bles, cov­er­ing their eyes and ears as they were qui­et­ed and com­fort­ed by teach­ing staff. The video drew con­dem­na­tion and calls for the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices to do more

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, prin­ci­pal Char­lene Quam­i­na and teach­ers re­fused to re­turn to the school, as they ex­pressed fear about their phys­i­cal safe­ty and that of their pupils. One of­fi­cial said it was the “last straw” in a very long line of sim­i­lar in­ci­dents which had left every­one trau­ma­tised.

Ac­cept­ing an in­vi­ta­tion from the CEBM to meet with Rose Hill staff yes­ter­day, Ja­cob ad­mit­ted, “Some of the oth­er schools are go­ing through some of the same sit­u­a­tions.”

Apart from Rose Hill, of­fi­cials from Our La­dy of Laven­tille RC School (Pic­ton Road); Beth­le­hem Boys’ RC School (Besson Street) and St Hil­da’s Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School (Quar­ry Street) al­so at­tend­ed yes­ter­day’s meet­ing at the CEBM.

Of­fi­cials from the TTPS’ Vic­tim Sup­port Ser­vices Unit and sev­er­al so­cial work­ers were al­so present, as they will form part of the coun­selling mech­a­nism.

Man­groo said while the CEBM will not du­pli­cate the coun­selling ser­vices be­ing pro­vid­ed by the MoE, but if ad­di­tion­al ser­vices are need­ed, they will as­sist.

Asked what mea­sures had been put in place to as­suage the teach­ers’ fears and en­cour­age a re­turn to the school, Ja­cob as­sured, “We made cer­tain plans in terms of strate­gies and how to deal with the sit­u­a­tion as it re­lates to the phys­i­cal as­pect of pro­vid­ing pa­trols and sta­t­ic, and all of that was or­gan­ised and is in place, so it won’t be any dif­fi­cul­ty for the po­lice.”

He said the TTPS was com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty not just to the teach­ers and pupils but the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty.

“If they open on Wednes­day, we are pre­pared but we are al­so look­ing at how we can lift our pres­ence and re­la­tion­ship with the oth­er schools with­in the area,” he con­tin­ued.

Ja­cob said TTPS-ap­point­ed School Li­ai­son Of­fi­cers to each school will al­so be as­sist­ed by the Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing Unit.

He said a sta­tion coun­cil, which will in­clude school prin­ci­pals, mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, the CEBM and the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice, had been formed and it is in­tend­ed that they will part­ner with the Port-of-Spain Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion.

Asked how they in­tend­ed to ad­dress the root cause of the prob­lem, which in­volved the pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal firearms, he said, “Yes, we are deal­ing with the per­sons who we call mis­cre­ants who are in­volved in the whole as­pect of cre­at­ing this dilem­ma.”

Asked if the teach­ers were sat­is­fied with the TTPS mea­sures, he said, “We have pro­vid­ed some good reme­dies for them.”

Look­ing back as T&T crossed the 500-mur­der mark last week, Ja­cob agreed, “We are in a cri­sis.”

Mean­while, Man­groo said there was progress in the close to three-and-a-half-hour meet­ing.

She added, “The teach­ers were very sat­is­fied. They were very hap­py that the Com­mis­sion­er and the oth­er mem­bers from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty took time to come and in­ter­act with them.”

She said the TTPS, CEBM and oth­er stake­hold­ers will con­tin­ue talks with the MoE to­day to de­cide what ac­tu­al­ly hap­pens to­mor­row.

“The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice has giv­en the as­sur­ance that the things they are ask­ing for in terms of safe­ty, pa­trols and so will be in place,” she said.

Asked about feed­back the CEBM re­ceived fol­low­ing Hinds’ claim the in­ci­dent was blown out of pro­por­tion and that staff and pupils were nev­er un­der threat, Man­groo said, “From the per­spec­tive of the peo­ple who were ac­tive­ly in­volved in the sit­u­a­tion, it was very trau­mat­ic, notwith­stand­ing how far away the ac­tion was. But if you are a Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, you are deal­ing with ob­jec­tive things so dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives.”