PORT ANTONIO, Portland — With 21 classrooms still not ready to accommodate students, Titchfield High School will offer classes on a rotational basis as it stays away from online lessons.

“Our grades seven and 11 will come in every day for the week but we will rotate the others,” acting principal of the 238-year-old institution Sheryl Horne-Mair told the Jamaica Observer on Monday.

She explained that 10th graders will be in classes on Mondays; Tuesdays are for eight graders; ninth graders will have classes on Wednesdays; then 10th graders will be back again on Thursdays and Fridays.

According to Horne-Mair, work to repair damage done by Hurricane Beryl was delayed by rains that lashed the parish over the past weekend. Among the sections is an area near the playing field, referred to as Portmore. The area, which still needs a roof, is usually used by seventh and eighth graders. Also under repair is a section towards the back of the school which is usually used by grades 10 and 11.

“The responsibility of the construction lies with the Ministry of Education, which employed the contractor, and there is a project manager here who does all of the activity and communicates with the region office and the [education] ministry — so we do not have hands-on [involvement],” Horne-Mair said. “The best we can do is go with the timelines provided by the project manager.”

She said tasks to be completed include installation of zinc roofing at ‘Portmore’, electrical checks, and a bit of painting.

“Based on what I see it may not be for Monday, so we may have to send out another set of schedules for next week. There may be a possibility of a two-week stagger based on what is happening,” said Horne-Mair.

The hurricane also damaged the roofs of the school’s auditorium, main building, and the principal’s office.

“The zinc on the roofs is damaged but they were not taken away. We will be a working school plant for a significant… time. If we get all the classrooms done, we can take in the full complement of students. We need to get the full complement back and be up and running,” said an optimistic Horne-Mair.

The education ministry’s senior communications officer for Region Two, Tanya Sinclair was on hand and cautious in her response as to when the work will be completed.

“I know that efforts will be undertaken to ensure that the project is completed as soon as it is possible — our building unit and NET [National Education Trust] will continue to work with the contractor to have this done at the soonest time. Based on the weather conditions and other unforeseen challenges, we have been delayed but we are, however, very grateful that the Administration has taken a number of initiatives to ensure that some of our children are here today — with alternating the year groups — and we are pleased with the turnout,” she said.

“We would have preferred if all the classrooms were ready for school this morning but we are used to the challenges and we will circumvent them and ensure teaching and learning happens. I don’t want to speak to the technical aspect concerning the project but [will] continue to liaise with the project manager and we will see what other support we can have to get the project completed. We are already behind the scheduled completed time so I don’t want to speak to the completion time of the project,” added Sinclair.

However, there are other challenges.

“We are short eight members of staff as we speak: three English language — including library studies — one Spanish, two sciences [teachers]. On Sunday we realised we do not have one chemistry teacher, one geography, and one for humanities. We have put out notices but persons are not responding. We were able to survive last year in relation to physics… as we had teachers out of Happy Grove and CASE [College of Agriculture, Science, and Education] who worked part-time to help bring our physics students through the school year,” said Principal Horne-Mair.

In response, the education ministry’s Sinclair noted that there are challenges across Jamaica but they are not insurmountable.

“I have not seen the data as yet, and some teachers will only resign on the morning of school so you can’t make preparation for those. But, the numbers are pretty good. Here we only have 93 per cent of the teaching staff present, and it’s a general thing across the board,” she said.