‘Give our children their school’

A WEEK of protests including placard marches and keeping their children at home are the peaceful “weapons of war” parents of students attending Icacos Government School are using to highlight to the Government the need for a new school to be built for the distant seaside village in South Trinidad. Placard protests continued yesterday with students shouting “give us our school” while their parents looked on in silent support. Things are so bad in Icacos, students are forced to attend classes in two churches in the district. With parents vowing to keep their children away from classes until a new school is built, it seems that the young minds in Icacos would be deprived of learning.

Yesterday approximately 40 placard-bearing parents and their children journeyed from the church where the children are housed to the old school compound, then to the proposed site, all within walking distance of each other. The protest for the new school by parents and students started last week and according to the parents, for the past five years their children have had to be housed at two churches. This after the steel beams of the old Icacos Government School collapsed in April 1998. By April 28 that year, students of First and Second year were housed at the nearby Icacos Missionary Baptist Church and those of Standards One to Five at the Tabernacle of  Prayer Church. While there was a  student population in the vicinity of 170 at the school this was drastically cut with the collapse of the school building and because of limited housing resources available to students.

Several students were  forced to take transfers and today the entire student population housed at the two churches numbers 74. The disappointed parents said last year Education Minister Hazel Manning promised to build them a new school by January. But this has not happened. Some of the placards carried by students yesterday read, “Hazel Nut Keeping she Promises,” “Children Want Education; but no school” and “Is it May 2020 Mrs Manning?” President of the school’s Parent Teacher’s Association (PTA) Phulmatee Paul said, “in late January last year four parents met with Mrs Manning and she said construction of the new school would have started in May that year and by January 2004 the children would have a new school...but that promise was not kept.” The parents said that two years ago the Ministry attempted to extend one of the churches to accommodate more students but the pastor and parents strongly resisted.

“What they wanted to do was make the church into a school, but we had to say no, else all now they would not be worrying to build a school again,” an irate parents said. At the Tabernacle Church the five classes are sectioned off by blackboards and the principal’s office is merely a section parted with two blackboards, from the other classes. Standard One student Nathan Stephen said, “I want my new school, it too  small here, if we get the new school I  could do my work better.” All his schoolmates agreed with him. However,  students of Standard Five preparing for SEA exams later this month worked in quiet concentration, preparing for the exam later this month.