REFUGE, Trelawny — In the wake of intense heat being experienced lately, students at Refuge Primary School in Trelawny are relishing the cooler climes they now experience in makeshift classrooms situated under tents on the school compound.

The Jamaica Observer caught up with a group of grade-six students just after they left class on Friday afternoon, and they welcomed the outdoor classes.

“It’s so cool and nice. I would like to return inside but outside is much cooler,” one schoolgirl now preparing for Primary Exit Profile (PEP) assessments said.

Another chimed in: “We really, really enjoy the cool breeze. When we were in grade five, sometimes we would come outside to read so we don’t mind being outside. When it rains, we go back inside.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by a grade-five student who the Sunday Observer  caught up with in the community.

“We get cool breeze. Breeze is good for you,” she said.

“When it rains, water come in through the roof when I was in grade four,” she added.

One parent who drove to Refuge Primary Friday afternoon to pick up his daughter, a grade-six student, was happy that she had the opportunity for learning despite the incomplete repairs at the institution in the wake of Hurricane Beryl.

“Everything good. This is my old school. It nice to know that although the repairs not completed, the teachers still come out to make sure seh dem [students] get dem education [as] they [teachers] could [have opted to] wait and put off classes. So, it good to know say they are here,” said the parent who only gave his name as Spencer.

But Jurant Walters, whose granddaughter attends the school, was upset that repairs to the school started late.

“The hurricane was from July [3] so the works should have started. Rain was falling Wednesday, and they stopped the children from coming to school because breeze deh lift up the tent,” Walters lamented.

He posited that more workers might be the solution to speed up the work.

“Maybe they want more workers to make the thing go faster. Probably is the material them couldn’t get, but them get some material. Them should near complete now. But, me glad the students dem still learning. They still get the opportunity to learn something,” he added.

With repairs under way at the hurricane-damaged Refuge Primary School, arrangements were made for classes to be held inside the Catholic church in the community, the basic school, and three tents in the schoolyard.

On Monday, grade-one students were accommodated at Refuge Basic School and sixth graders had classes inside the church.

The initial plan for Tuesday was to house students from grades two to five under tents. But, after a heavy downpour on Wednesday, the grades two to five students participated in online learning out of fear of exposing them to more inclement weather.

“We weren’t able to get some of the grades two to five students to come in on Monday [but] they were in place Tuesday, and it didn’t rain. Wednesday, the system [tropical wave] started to move across the island and we had a real downpour here, and we deemed it not to be the most comfortable or certainly not the space that you can have any sort of engagement as long as it rains,” Audley Gyles, chairman of the school board, told the
Sunday Observer.

“So, the principal sought the permission of the board to have the grades two to five go back online for the rest of this week, so we don’t have grades two to five in any of the physical spaces at the moment but they are online, being engaged,” he added.

Gyles noted that the grade-six students preparing for PEP assessments are housed under the tent.

“This is a PEP year for them, and so we decided that we needed to get them back here for yesterday [Thursday] and today [Friday]), and kept our fingers crossed they would not be affected by rain,” he explained.

“What we do is, we end school earlier. So we normally end at 3:00 pm, we now end at 1:00 pm because of all of the dynamics — and worse because the rain normally starts in the afternoon. So, since Tuesday we actually started having school end at 1:00 pm,” he added.

The school board chairman also said one of the two buildings, “the one which accommodates grades one, two, three, and four — along with the canteen, tuck shop — that’s probably about 90 per cent completed”.

He disclosed that work on the other building is not going as fast as the other block, and admitted that he is not optimistic the repairs will be completed in time for Monday.

“I am waiting on a call from the Ministry of Education; we need to meet with them to work out the logistics for next week,” Gyles said.

But, he was full of praises for the residents who rallied to support the school.

“I have to praise members of the community who really came in to lend a hand, to see how it is that they can provide support for the school.

“It was the community members who came in Monday morning and raked the entire area where the tents are installed… and it was the Catholic church who extended themselves to us,” Gyles said.