Jolted by last Tuesday’s incident at Vere Technical High School in Hayes, Clarendon in which a security guard accidentally shot and injured five male students, two organisations representing secondary school administrators have called for a comprehensive policy on school security and safety.

“I suspect that most of our schools are not secure,” Nadine Molloy, head of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools (JAPSS), told the Sunday Observer.

Molloy said her organisation will be meeting with the minister of education, youth and culture, Maxine Henry-Wilson, this week to discuss “in detail the incident at Vere”, and to engage in discussions that will lead to the presentation of a security policy by September 2007.

Last week, JAPSS issued a statement in which the safety and security of schools and whose responsibility it is to ensure both, were questioned.

Molloy defined security as the existence of physical barriers such as perimeter fencing and safety as the degree to which those inside the school are out of harm’s way. Buff Bay High School, where Molloy is principal, is fenced on three out of four sides, she said.

Head of the Jamaica Association of Principals and Vice Principals, Alphansus Davis, said the absence of security in schools is a reflection of the “total breakdown of the Jamaican society and a high level of disrespect for authority”.

“Things have changed,” Davis said. “Schools used to be secure. Now that’s where they (the criminals) come to fight out many of their wars.”

In the proposed policy, Davis would like to see guidelines for all schools to have perimeter fencing and the same entrance and exit. He said such a policy should also give principals more autonomy to discipline students.

Within the policy on security, Davis would like to see a national policy on violence-free schools and a national code of conduct for all students.

Davis said his school, Spaldings High in Clarendon, was fenced this year because of the recognition that “intruders can come at any time”. He said the school found the funding on its own, but other schools might be unable to find the resources.

“The schools do not have the wherewithal to put in measures to ensure the safety of our school populations… the ministry also has no money,” he said.

However, Davis argued that while schools can attempt to provide security with the erection of fences, safety is another story because some students put other students at risk.

“You have children who take guns to school, and to compound the issue further, the ministry is saying we have no legal right to search them. So a child could be standing in front of you with a gun and you don’t know,” said Davis who related that in his school, he has seen students take a variety of weapons, such knives, ice picks and scissors.

As a result, he said, the connection between security and indiscipline cannot be ignored.

He said a major concern coming out of the shooting at Vere Technical surrounds the rowdy behaviour of some students of the school as shown on a television news programme last Tuesday night.

“As administrators, we have to make it known that such behaviour cannot be condoned,” he said, adding that there is no excuse for vandalism of school property, which some students allegedly participated in, in response to the shooting of the students.

Davis said he observed that the students appeared under control until outsiders started to demonstrate.

“The children are confused, because they have one standard [of behaviour] at school, they have one standard in the wider society and they have a different standard at home.”

Consequently, principals are burdened with addressing disciplinary matters. “When teachers are in the classroom, we have to concentrate on pedagogy, we can’t concentrate on everything else that is happening outside,” Davis said.

In addition to the fencing, therefore, Spaldings High has employed two security guards who patrol the school compound. This, Davis said, has “paid rich dividends”.

“Even intruders who used to come and sell the children drugs have stopped,” Davis said.

He said that the presence of armed guards in schools depends heavily on the “locale in which the school finds itself”.

Since the incident at Vere Technical last week, police have charged the security guard, Basil Brown, with illegal possession of firearm, after it was discovered that he did not have a permit to carry the shotgun used to injure the students. His boss, Samuel Tulloch, has also been charged for operating an unregistered company.

Making it clear that her organisation was not about to defend a “principal who has erred”, Molloy said there is nothing to suggest that the incident at Vere could have been avoided if the security company was “above board”.

All the emotions aside, Molloy said what was needed now was an attempt at solutions. She said the seeming delay in the demand for such a policy has to do with the inconsistencies in security needs of schools in rural or urban areas.

Minister Henry-Wilson said security in schools remained a concern, but the situation at Vere Technical High was not the norm. “I have no evidence to suggest that what happened at Vere in terms of armed guards is widespread,” Henry-Wilson said.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force’s Safe Schools Programme is one initiative aimed at providing security and safety in schools.

Under the programme, which currently operates in 114 schools across the island, police officers, known as School Resource Officers (SRO), visit the schools, check for weapons and carry out safety surveys.

Deputy Superintendent of Police Mervin McNab, who is the national co-ordinator for the programme, said it has been successful so far.

“Their [SROs] role is to ensure that weapons are not brought in,” he said, adding that sections of some schools, such as abandoned back areas or breaches in barriers, “might lead to incidents” and the SROs seek to eliminate such incidents.

McNab said there is also a lecture component of the programme, where SROs engage students on issues such as murder, rape and extortion.

But the Safe Schools Programme, implemented in 2004, is slated to expire in five years.

“At the moment, sustainability is guaranteed,” McNab said. “We hope it will be one of those programmes that will go on [after the five-year period] and eventually our schools will return to normalcy.”

Ahead of this week’s meeting, Molloy said her organisation was prepared to agree upon and proceed on a charted course with the Ministry of Education. And Henry-Wilson said she was ready to listen.

“Certainly, we await discussions to see what they are requesting,” Henry-Wilson said.

mccattyk@jamaicaobserver.com