MONTEGO BAY, St James — While other principals eagerly welcomed all their students back to full face-to-face classes on Monday morning, Principal Kingsley Bailey could only accommodate roughly half of the 820 children enrolled at Irwin Primary School here due to a serious case of termite infestation.

“During that period where we were closed for almost two years, termites destroyed a lot of our furniture, so we were only able to accommodate grades five and six students fully,” Bailey told the Jamaica Observer Monday.

“Unfortunately, grades one to four are still on a rotational basis. So, we only have half of the school population in,” the principal added.

The rotational system being employed by the primary school, Bailey told the Observer, will see students in grades one to four journeying to school only twice per week. This, he pointed out, is the best the school can do at the moment due to the current circumstances.

“Currently, we have Group A out today and Group B will be here tomorrow. We will do the same thing for Wednesday and Thursday, then we will have a full online session on Friday,” Bailey explained.

“We met with our parents yesterday [Sunday] in a Parent-Teachers’ Association (PTA) meeting to inform them of the situation. As usual, our parents are cooperating with us.”

While he tries to carefully navigate through this situation, the principal said he recognised that this is a major setback for the school as he believes the online resources have now been exhausted after two challenging years of usage.

“We engage those who are not here today through the online portal, and whenever they come back to school the teachers will go back over the lessons that were shared online. What we realised is that since school has been reopened face-to-face some students do not go online to do the work,” Bailey explained.

“That is where we have a little challenge. Also, our Internet connectivity is a major issue; the band is so low that we cannot have live sessions with them, so what the teachers do is prepare the work and put it online for them to complete,” he continued.

Classrooms have now been forced shut due to this case of infestation. The school’s library has also been affected, the Observer noticed during its walk across the school’s compound.

Students who can go into the school face-to-face are, however, no strangers to the termite infested furniture at their school, Bailey said.

“There are some desks that are currently in use by our students even though they are infested by termites. We have to use them because we have nothing else, and we want to have our students in class,” the principal said.

Grade four teacher Novelette Archer-Gardener told this newspaper that “each time a student leans on the desk to write we have to be sweeping out dust”.

She added that due to this grave conditions, only half of her class can be accommodated each day.

“The desks are rotting so we don’t have space to put them. If we should have all of them face-to-face there wouldn’t be anywhere for them to sit and we cannot have multiple students to a desk,” Archer-Gardener stated.

The school’s principal noted that he has shared these conditions with the Ministry of Education and Youth.

“We are currently liaising with the Ministry of Education to get this problem resolved as soon as possible,” Bailey added.

At the same time, Bailey said that Irwin Primary School has been plagued with numerous break-ins since schools were forced shut in 2020 due to the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“We have had about 14 break-ins since March 2020. Each time they come in,they damage the locks and windows,” said the disappointed principal.

“I know that at one point, since we reopened, they stole hand sanitisers, paper towels, toilet tissues, and speakers that some teachers used during their lessons. They even stole fans from some of the classrooms,” Bailey said.

“To add insult to injury, they have defecated on the school property on numerous occasions. Yesterday (Sunday) when I came here, I realised that they defecated on the grade six block after they broke into the school between Friday night and Sunday morning,” said the principal.

The school’s lack of resources has played a major factor in these continuous break-ins, Bailey told the Observer.

“We would normally generate funds when school is in session to pay for the security. But now security is only here for half of the days,” the principal explained.

“The only 24-hour security we have is an electronic system that is at the canteen and the main office. I know that on February 20 they (intruders) went up to the canteen and kicked the door, eventually tearing off the side. They went inside but the alarm went off, so they did not take anything,” he added.

“But they went into the classrooms and ransacked the teachers’ drawers. They also damaged the windows….and stole the ancillary worker’s clothes. We had some machetes in the 4-H department, and they took two of them. She also had a box of tissues to distribute to students whenever they were going to the bathroom, and they took that as well.” Bailey told the Observer.