Holy Trinity classrooms not yet ready
HIS colleagues in other schools were either busy with the first day of classes or with orientation meetings. But on the official start of the 2007/08 school year, the head of Holy Trinity High in Kingston, Sadpha Bennett, did not have a clear plan for the resumption of classes at his school.
The blame for that was laid squarely at the feet of Hurricane Dean, which devastated the institution on George Headley Drive on the western side of Sabina Park.
Grade blocks 10 and 11, as well as the library and cyber centre were stripped of their zinc roofs, causing water damage to furniture, books and computers. Bennett estimated the damage at more than $10 million.
Consequently, he said that while orientation for students of all grades would take place today and tomorrow he couldn’t give a definitive answer when classes would begin.
“As soon as we get some info as to when the roofs will be fixed, we’ll be able to say more definitely when classes will resume,” Bennett told the Observer yesterday.
“We will be taking in the first formers and the extended day fourth and fifth formers, then we’ll phase the others,” he said. “We’re still doing space audits and are still trying to fit the students into the classes.”
The extra hours of school that fourth and fifth formers qualified to sit seven and more subjects at the Caribbean Secondary Examination Certificate (CSEC) is known as the extended day programme.
Bennett said he hoped to get word yesterday from the contractors who were selected to repair the roofs and was hopeful that the work would be completed within 12 to 16 days.
However, Holy Trinity High was not the only Kingston school not ready for the commencement of classes. At the Donald Quarrie High, scores of students arrived for school only to be told that orientation was rescheduled for today and tomorrow. Classes, they were informed, would resume next Monday, but only on alternate days because of the structural damage occasioned by Hurricane Dean on August 19.
“That’s how it will go until the Ministry of Education comes in and does the repairs,” principal Reford Hinds told the Observer.
