PRINCIPALS from several Corporate Area schools converged on Belmont Academy in Westmoreland on Saturday, offering hands-on support as the institution pushes to fast-track its clean-up efforts following extensive damage caused by Hurricane Melissa on October 28.

Approximately 70 per cent of the school’s infrastructure was significantly impacted. Principal Rayon Simpson says he was initially stunned by the scale of destruction left behind.

“I was amazed that the campus suffered such devastation because it is a fairly new campus,” he explained. “The strength of it was never in question any at all but anything that was zinc, we lost.”

Despite the hardship, Simpson expressed deep gratitude for the overwhelming outpouring of assistance from schools across the island.

“From Thursday we have been visited by a number of high schools and other persons in the community who have come to give us support,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“Calabar High School is here, Tivoli Gardens, Waterford. We have had St Andrew High for Girls, Eltham, the Jamaica Teachers’ Association… too many to mention,” the principal said.

Unlike in Kingston, schools in western Jamaica bore the brunt of Hurricane Melissa, with the eye of the storm making landfall in Westmoreland.

Tivoli Gardens High School Principal Marvin Johnson said unity will be essential to accelerating recovery for the schools most severely affected.

“We have to build a strong bond among our colleague schools, particularly those that have been severely affected,” Johnson stated.

“We want the students also to learn from this experience because these are values that they need to learn — that we need to support each other and work as a team,” he added.

Johnson also highlighted Tivoli Gardens High’s own relief initiative.

“We have been collecting items to ship to the schools. We have already donated to STETHS [St Elizabeth Technical High School] and we will continue to gather more items,” he told the Observer.

Calabar High School has also been at the forefront of school-to-school recovery efforts. Principal Sian Wilson noted that her students have been travelling to Trelawny to support Westwood High School.

“We have a strong bond with Westwood High School,” she professed. “It’s our sister school. Last week our boys were in Trelawny helping Westwood with their clean-up efforts.”

Wilson stressed the importance of national unity during this period of recovery.

“It is very important for us to bond at a time like this,” she said. “Words can’t describe what we are seeing. Our fear is that after a while people may get back to normal and forget but as schools, especially in the eastern end of the region, we are committed to going as long as we can.”

Belmont Academy has remained closed since the hurricane, with classes yet to resume due to the extent of the destruction.

Principal Simpson says he cannot give a timeline for reopening.

“The natural question I get as a principal is, ‘When are we going to resume?’ but there are many students that are homeless right now. There are persons who have lost everything and have to be protecting the very little that they have remaining so we have to be very sensitive towards that,” he explained.