THE decision to reopen the doors to Operation Restoration Christian School (ORCS) last Monday was a tough one for founder Lorna Stanley.

According to Stanley, keeping the school running has become an almost unbearable financial burden — a challenge made worse by a robbery at the school in July. ORCS lost some $100,000 in cash, computer equipment and a digital camera to thieves.

“When I started this institution 17 years ago, I never imagined the school would be at the stage where closing it became the most likely option for me two months ago,” Stanley told Career & Education sadly. “(However), at the end of the last term, I really considered closing the school and I was about to do it.”

Two encounters caused her to reconsider.

“At our last graduation ceremony, a parent ran to me after I announced that the school might soon be closed and said ‘Ms Lorna, Ms Lorna, you can’t close the school’,” Stanley recalled, adding that the parent proceeded to take money out of her pocket and handed it to her.

“‘Ms Lorna, a my food money this, take it. But you just can’t close the school’,” she recalled the parent saying. “It was touching. I never imagined that we had made such a big impact on their lives,” she noted.

Her other inspiration came from a teacher, who years ago attended ORCS. Stanley said the teacher was offered a position at a school that pays twice that which is offered at ORCS but decided to decline the offer in the interest of her struggling alma mater.

“She turned the job down and she sent me an e-mail that really motivated me,” Stanley said.

At ORCS — located at 12c Collie Smith Drive in Trench Town, St Andrew — the fee is $8,500 but most parents cannot afford it. Many cannot even afford to buy their children’s school supplies, leaving Stanley herself to step in to help, in the interest of the students who are taught up to the grade nine level.

“Just recently I had to purchase uniforms and shoes for students. The parents just can’t afford it… But if we don’t take them (the youths) off the streets, what will become of them and our society?” said the ORCS founder.

Nonetheless, the difficulties persist for the institution, which started as an after-school programme in 1994. That changed in 1996 after Stanley realised that most of the students enrolled in the programme were not registered with a full-time secondary-level institution and opted to transform ORCS into a day school.

They now offer their services to youngsters aged 12 to 19, the majority of whom are unable to read and/or write well. After being educated up to the grade nine, they are allowed to sit the Grade Nine Achievement Test.

Those who are successful in the test are encouraged to enrol in the school in which they are placed while others are introduced to skills training programmes offered at the HEART Trust/NTA.

In her interview with Career & Education, Stanley revealed the school’s list of priority needs and sought to justify each. She noted that the school had, up to now, not been able to meet those needs, given the low socio-economic status of parents, many of whom are unemployed.

Meanwhile, the school community has got their first helping hand from the Scotiabank Jamaica Foundation, which recently awarded them $150,000. The occasion was the foundation’s Shining Star Scholarship Awards Luncheon.

This money, Stanley, said is already committed to ORCS’ canteen refurbishment and the preparation of a meal for the students. Yet more is needed.

“We are a safe haven for many children of this community… Our needs are many and we really need assistance so that we can save these children,” Stanley said.