CHARGING that the perennial problem of children loitering in public spaces after school, gorging on illegal substances, and engaging in lewd behaviour has grown worse, president of Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools (JAPSS) Linvern Wright is advocating for school and parent-backed monitors to be placed at strategic spots.

“We really need, as a country, to determine whether or not we want our kids to be loitering; and I think we need to ensure that there are people in these bus parks that are going to monitor these children, ensuring that they do not stay inside there. They need to be specifically assigned and given the authority to do that because it has gotten that bad — and it is all over Jamaica,” Wright told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

Noting that school resource officers — trained police officers placed in schools to help maintain discipline under the Safe Schools Project — could be the ones to head this charge, Wright said while Jamaican cops are already stretched in dealing with criminal activity, “maybe they need to become more active with these students”.

The JAPSS president was responding to a report about students from several prominent high schools in the Corporate Area who have taken to dealing in and smoking marijuana, while in uniform, at a particular plaza daily, and whose behaviour is a source of distress to business owners and shoppers alike.

“I know, for example, in Falmouth where I am from it’s the police who say to me, ‘Mr Wright, we have this student,’ so because they know I have that relationship with the police, this kind of behaviour is reduced significantly,” Wright, who is the principal of William Knibb Memorial High School in Trelawny, told the Observer.

“The police are willing to do it, it’s just that it has to be brought to their attention. They have been very cooperative, as far as I know, in relation to those things on this side of the country. It’s not that the children don’t do those things here; they do those things but we get them to cooperate with us. What we do is we ensure that when they are brought to the station, their parents have to come for them,” the principal stated.

He, in the meantime, lamented the weakness being demonstrated by Jamaican parents, which he say, is manifested in the behaviour of their offspring.

“It’s a straight parenting problem; once the children are under proper scrutiny and there is sufficient supervision of their time after school by their parents, that doesn’t really happen. Unfortunately, sometimes schools are expected to be dealing sanctions for students when it comes on to these things but that, to me, is when it gone bad. But, really and truly, if it is that these students were coming from homes that are responsible enough and their movements were monitored after school, [we would not have these issues],” Wright contended.

“We talk about phones. Many of them have phones and so parents can monitor their moves and tell them to come home. There is a level of complicity, not just from parents but there are parents who are complicit and seek pardon for them when they do these things, which seems to be the strategy each time to get these children off because they are their children. And then there are those people who, because they have tried with them so often and they didn’t respond, they just don’t bother with them, so people leave them alone — but it’s getting really horrible now,” he pointed out.

Wright said children who indulge in marijuana smoking and other prohibited substances, alcohol, sex, and bleaching are a thorn in the side of educators.

“I can tell you that at school, teachers really have it rough daily. If you don’t run a strict regime at school you really get no results. You just imagine these children at school, you do all kinds of programmes and they are just not interested in school. It’s not just a matter of teaching — you can’t teach them interest.

“The difference between our generation and this generation is that we were interested, even when we never had as many opportunities as they have now,” he said.

While noting that the Ministry of Education’s Safety and Security Policy Guidelines gives principals wide powers, he urged his colleagues to “do your jobs without fear or favour, and do it fairly”.

“As principals we have so many views, and sometimes when we do these things the kind of backlash you get has more to do with people just feeling that they have to be fighting for a cause, which to me is inimical to society’s sustainability. To me, responsibility precedes freedom — that is why we don’t give children certain freedoms,” Wright declared.

“There is a difference between looseness and freedom, and I think as a society we do not understand that distinction and have children understand that when you are loose, you are going to be reined in. You can’t be loose about lateness. You can’t be loose about how they dress to come to school. You can’t be loose about doing assignments. You can’t be loose about the things they indulge in like the smoking, the drinking, the sexual behaviours. We have to rein those things in,” he insisted.

Added Wright: “There are times when they need counselling but there are times when they need to understand that there are consequences to their action — and I think a part of what is killing our society is that we are robbing these children of the consequences of their actions. Each time they get away it becomes a bigger sore.”

The 2015 edition of the Safety and Security Policy Guidelines states that, the “Ministry of Education is taking a zero-tolerance approach to the possession of weapons and other contraband in schools”. It says principals have a duty to ensure that the laws of the society are observed and enforced in the institutions they lead, and holds that “whatever is illegal in the society is illegal in the school and must be treated accordingly”.

It also says that where breaches of the law occur in the school, the school leadership has a duty to report the matter to the police or other relevant agencies, and further encouraged principals to utilise the resources of the police in controlling weapons and contraband. Furthermore, it says principals are directed to strictly prohibit the sale of tobacco, smoking paraphernalia, and alcohol-related items on the school compound, and notes that where the principal has knowledge that the prohibited items are being sold to students, on or off the school compound, this should be reported to the police so that violators may be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.