SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — Rose Hall Primary and Infant School Principal Kayon Whyne has a clear vision of her priorities when school reopens following the passing of the current COVID-19 crisis.

Teaching and learning will obviously be top of the list for the school, nestled high up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, below Malvern and to the north-west of Junction.

But also, Whyne will be urgently driving a fund-raising project to acquire a school bus in order to make life easier for her students and teachers.

As it is, she told the Jamaica Observer recently, many students — and staff members too — have to walk far in very adverse conditions to and from school, which has capacity for 500 but currently only accommodates 100 students.

Whyne said a dedicated school bus, expected to cost about $3 million — able to take children and some staff members to and from school — would make a huge difference.

“More students would have been enrolled if the distance between the communities and the school weren’t so far apart. Moreover, taxis refuse to traverse this side of the community,” said Whyne in a recent note to the Observer.

“It would have been worse if the road wasn’t patched. At the moment we have got students walking from as far as two or so miles to get to school and said distance to go back.

“It is a concern… when it rains or when it gets very cold. Our students are often times sick with respiratory tract complaints due to the exposure to these weather conditions.

“I really admire the parents though, because our students come out, whether rain or shine..,” she said, adding that sometimes in a bid to protect their children “parents seek help from the local taxis but only about two of five drivers might be willing to do a trip”.

In late February, as Rose Hall Primary and Infant celebrated its annual social, health and career fair, the school got a huge boost with the gift of £7,500 as a result of fund-raising in Britain led by past student Fern Springer.

“I heard they needed a bus and I decided to raise funds to buy a bus,” Springer told the Observer shortly after handing over a cheque to the school, alongside her husband Ethan.

Springer said her church in Britain, other past students of the school, friends, family members in Bristol and Huddersfield, as well as popular radio personality in Britain Herbie Whyte, among others, all played a big role.

Springer said she first heard about the need “on social media from Whyne “and I just decided to do my part to help”.

A grateful Whyne said Springer’s gift would further inspire efforts to raise funds locally and also meant fruition of the project was much closer at hand.

Up to now, the school principal said, fund-raising for the school bus project has mainly centred around the annual Eziekel Crawford May Fair held on Labour Day and which brought in about $300,000 last year.

About $1.6 million, inclusive of the money from Springer’s initiative, has so far been raised, Whyne told the Observer.

During the social, health and career fair, last month — held at Portsea Health Centre — staff of the school, supported by parents and students, defied wet weather to show off their fund-raising skills by selling a dizzying range of Jamaican cuisine, from stew peas to coconut drops.

“If you love Jamaican food, we have it here,” boasted grade five teacher Claudine Lewis-Harris.

“We sell to the community. Anybody come in we sell to them, and what we make (profit) we use to buy stuff for the class — markers, broom whatever we might need for the class,” she said.

“We know that the Ministry [of Education] can’t handle all the expenses, we try our best to find creative ways to make some money for [our needs],” Lewis-Harris said.