Rose­marie Sant

The 129-year-old St Michael’s School for Boys is ear­marked for clo­sure and word is that mem­bers of staff will be of­fered vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages and the place­ment of the four boys who now re­side there is in the hands of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty. The clo­sure is on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the An­gli­can Church.

But the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, which rep­re­sents the work­ers, is warn­ing it is ready to do bat­tle and is ac­cus­ing the Church of want­i­ng to sell the 55-acre prop­er­ty.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter con­firmed the de­ci­sion arose out of dis­cus­sions with the Bish­op of Trinidad and To­ba­go and school’s man­age­ment board. (See sto­ry be­low)

The T&T Guardian ob­tained a copy of a let­ter dat­ed April 23, 2018, sent to Rev­erend Fa­ther Er­ic Thomp­son, chair­man of St Michael’s, from Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Jacque­line John­son, in which John­son con­firmed the de­ci­sion to close the home was made fol­low­ing a re­quest made by the An­gli­can Church. She said the Gov­ern­ment had “con­sid­ered and agreed with the rec­om­men­da­tion of the An­gli­can Dio­cese to close the St Michael’s Home for Boys.”

Ac­cord­ing to John­son, the Gov­ern­ment had al­so not­ed the “ad­vice from the Church that it will de­ter­mine whether it will con­tin­ue to ser­vice chil­dren as dic­tat­ed in its orig­i­nal man­date and if so, make new arrange­ments in ac­cor­dance with the suite of chil­dren’s leg­is­la­tion which has been pro­claimed.”

John­son has re­quest­ed that Thomp­son at­tend a meet­ing to­day, to get his “in­put in re­spect of ad­vanc­ing the clo­sure of the school.”

But PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke has ques­tioned the de­ci­sion tak­en with­out the in­put of the union.

At a meet­ing with staffers and the PS, Duke ques­tioned John­son on the de­ci­sion.

“You nev­er thought for one mo­ment that the PSA should be present?” he asked, de­mand­ing that she “press the re­set but­ton” and get all the stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the PSA, around the ta­ble to dis­cuss the clo­sure as ear­ly as to­day.

John­son has ac­ced­ed to Duke’s re­quest to or­gan­ise the meet­ing.

There is a part­ner­ship ex­ist­ing be­tween the state and the An­gli­can Church re­gard­ing St Michael’s by virtue of the pro­vi­sions of the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties (De­c­la­ra­tion) Or­der, Le­gal No­tice No.21 of 1980, which ef­fec­tive­ly placed the school and its em­ploy­ees un­der the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ty Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (SASC). In the part­ner­ship, most of the staff was pro­vid­ed through the SASC and the Gov­ern­ment al­so pro­vid­ed fi­nan­cial sup­port for the de­vel­op­ment of the school’s fa­cil­i­ties. That fi­nan­cial sup­port is the an­nu­al sum of TT$1 mil­lion.

Duke is of the view that the statu­to­ry or­der and the fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion of the state gives the gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty at St Michael’s

“We are say­ing if St Michaels’ is sub­ject to the act, it is now a crea­ture of the state and the board can­not do as it damn well pleas­es but must be sub­ject to the cut and thrust of the law that guides all statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties.”

An­gry staffers who spoke with the T&T Guardian said the school had been mis­man­aged for a long time.

“They put square pegs in round holes and now they want to squeeze the work­ers,” some work­ers said.

The work­ers raised those con­cerns at yes­ter­day’s meet­ing with John­son, telling the PS since Thomp­son took over as board chair­man things had gone dras­ti­cal­ly wrong.

“We spent $206,000 on clothes in one for less than 40 boys,” one work­er iden­ti­fied as Sean Grady Mills told her.

He said it was “un­fair” for the PS and Gov­ern­ment to blame staff for the state of the school.

John­son made it clear she was not blam­ing work­ers for the state of af­fairs at St Michael’s.

“I have been deal­ing with man­age­ment in terms of au­dit­ing and en­sur­ing they bring ex­pen­di­ture in line with the num­ber of boys they have,” she said.

She not­ed that while St Michael’s once housed 80 boys, the num­bers had fall­en dras­ti­cal­ly to 40, yet she said ex­pen­di­ture seemed to be go­ing through the roof.

“They were still spend­ing eight to ten thou­sand dol­lars per boy per month, $40 dol­lars on a t-shirt which sell­ing for $15 on Char­lotte Street,” she said.

This prompt­ed Duke to ask “and no one get locked up for that?”

Duke ques­tioned the mo­tives for the clo­sure. He told the PS he be­lieved the re­al rea­son the board took the de­ci­sion was the val­ue of the prop­er­ty on which the home is lo­cat­ed.

If the Church re­fus­es to meet with the PSA, he said staffers will arm them­selves with plac­ards and protest out­side the Church.

Calls to An­gli­can Bish­op Claude Berke­ley’s mo­bile phone went unan­swered yes­ter­day.