The Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School was closed on Monday and Tuesday, February 8 and 9, while the Department and Ministry of Education grappled with the growing nuisance of school violence and teacher defiance.
It all came to a head when the teachers staged a sit-in at the Campus B courtyard on Friday, February 5, forcing the closure of the school and the sending home of the students. The event is said to have been sparked when one of the teachers disciplined a female student who then travelled to the nearby Orealia Kelly Primary School and assaulted that teacher’s daughter in revenge.
The protesting teachers took the position that they had reached a point where they could no longer tolerate the defiance of students; the school violence; and the fact that they were of the opinion that their complaints to the Department and Ministry of Education were falling on deaf ears.
They thought their sit-in would send a strong message of their disgust and call for remedial action. The Minister of Education, Ms. Dee-Ann Kentish-Rogers, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Dr. Bonnie Richardson-Lake, and Chief Education Officer, Mr. Bren Romney, visited the teachers – and the students were sent home for the rest of the day. The Ministry of Education officials and the teachers then engaged in a discussion of the event and began meeting at the Teachers’ Resource Centre the same Friday afternoon, as well as the following Monday and Tuesday.
The overall Principal of Campus B and Campus A, Mrs. Rita Celestine Carty, told The Anguillian newspaper, which was summoned to Campus B by the teachers: “It was a situation that started in the Campus B classroom and then ended up on the compound of the Primary School. It is a very undesirable situation. Our responsibility is to our students to build themselves up because, in that way, they are building up all of us. We are all affected negatively or positively by what our children do. So they are our responsibility to make sure that they can affect the quality of our lives positively.
“This is a chance for us to continue to work with [the offending student] so that she can understand what school is for; how she is supposed to benefit from school; and how her parents …[could] partner with the school for the best outcome… She apologised orally to both her mother and father, and also to her teacher, and she is now writing those letters of apology which will also be signed by her parents. Because the situation has unfolded for such a long time, and she has had time to reflect, and has not really reflected properly, she is also been placed on a period of suspension. She is also going to be doing community service.”
Chief Education Officer, Mr. Romney, who arranged for the school buses to return the students to their homes, told the newspaper: “Over the last couple of weeks, the school’s administration highlighted a number of instances of ongoing student violence that needs to be addressed. We are currently dealing with the matter on a case by case basis. Each solution will be different depending on the case and the student involved – and the circumstances of the violence. We are prepared, as the Department and Ministry of Education, to utilise the tools that are available to us, under the Education Act, to ensure that we create a safe environment for students and teachers at the school.
“The incident, that the teachers are sitting-in for today, is quite an unfortunate one…It also does not lend itself to a working environment where everyone can feel safe and where teaching and learning can take place.”
Mr. Romney added that the meeting with teachers was “to get a grasp of all the issues affecting them – and to see what measures could be put in place, in a swift manner, to address these issues.”
The Minister of Education, Ms. Kentish-Rogers, who endorsed the meeting with teachers, assured them of her Ministry’s concern about school violence and its support for them. She was also involved in the discussions with the teachers at the Resource Centre on Monday and Tuesday, February 8 and 9.
Other reports about the school violence issue are published elsewhere in this edition of The Anguillian newspaper.
