THE frustrations are extreme and totally understandable, but also reports of the determination to resume school across hurricane-ravaged sections of the country should serve as inspiration for the rest of us.

Take, for example, the story told by Carisbrook Primary and Infant School Principal Mr Patrick Malcolm on Monday that although his school wasn’t ready “any at all” for reopening after lagging repairs following last October’s devastation by Hurricane Melissa, students were anxious to return.

According to him, when it was suggested that perhaps students should stay home for “another few days” while repair work continued “you could see the look on their face as if to say, ‘Oh, absolutely not.’ So they are here and they are ready to go, so we’re going to work with them.”

Our reporter tells us that at Carisbrook Primary, which is located close to Lacovia, St Elizabeth, 11 study spaces, including the computer lab and library, are out of use as rehabilitation work continues, leaving the school to improvise in temporary spaces. When school started on Monday students were being accommodated in an open-air classroom and a tent, while other areas have had to be repurposed to facilitate classes.

Hence, Mr Malcolm’s comment: “The plant is not ready any at all, by any stretch of the imagination…”

At Glen Stuart Primary, Infant and Special Education School in Maggotty, northern St Elizabeth, five classrooms remained without windows on Monday, the infant department was out of use and other work remained undone.

But Principal Ms Shanika Marshall and her staff felt that, for the good of their students, physical school was a necessity.

According to Ms Marshall, the decision to reopen physical school was largely influenced by learning loss going back to the COVID-19 pandemic and recognition of inadequacies such as poor connectivity which would make online learning unattainable for many. Economics also played a part, she said.

“We are really focusing on literacy, because these students would have suffered a lot during COVID. … around this area connectivity is poor. [And] We have quite a number of students who … their whole financial background is of concern, and so, getting devices and Internet access would have been a challenge,” she said.

Also in St Elizabeth, at Holland Primary, on the fringes of the famous Holland Bamboo, our news team found students under a mango tree and a “structure made of bamboo” having fled scorching heat under tents brought in as temporary replacements for wrecked
classrooms.

We agree with Principal Miss Simone Doctor that outdoor classes are not new and are often a welcome alternative to concrete and steel. The trouble, though, is that in many sections of western and south central Jamaica heavy afternoon rains are now an almost daily occurrence.

All across the west, challenges such as these and worse are facing schools — hardly surprising following what was the most ferocious hurricane to have hit Jamaica on record.

Clearly though, repair and construction work has to go faster than has been the case up to now. For that reason we believe a suggestion by Jamaica Teachers’ Association President Ms LaSonja Harrison — who visited hard-hit schools in Westmoreland and St James on Monday — for the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) to be enlisted to assist schools’ reconstruction should be taken on-board.

Why not?