It simply cannot be kosher: Ms Mary Redman not turning up for yesterday’s ministerial committee meeting mandated by the Prime Minister on the Alexandra School imbroglio.
However you look at it, an audience before the Minister of Education, Minister of Labour and Social Security, the Parliamentary Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Attorney General is at a “higher level” than any Ms Redman has had before. After all, it was “higher level” talk the Barbados Secondary Teachers’ Union (BSTU) president was seeking.
It is no understatement that Ms Redman’s absence from yesterday’s Cabinet committee meeting for resolution was an insult to the Prime Minister himself; the sending of an “emissary” an even greater affront. It was Mr Stuart who determined the committee’s composition and mandated the calling of the meeting of all parties involved in this school dispute that has really been going on for far too long.
We are not unmindful that Ms Redman has some difficulty sitting in the same room as Alexandra School principal Jeff Broomes. She has publicly enunciated her trauma often enough. But to what intensity is Ms Redman’s discomfort sitting at a table with Mr Broomes for a few hours, compared with that of hundreds of children for weeks languishing during empty tuition periods – with possible lasting dire consequences?
It seems Ms Redman and her BSTU will meet with none other than the Prime Minister – certainly will have no other chair than Mr Freundel Stuart himself.
It is quite demanding. But after all, Mr Stuart did declare to the nation that the Alexandra School conflagration would consume his every attention; and that he would deal with the matter swiftly, and “without fear of favour”.
Truly, we still await such expedited action. In fact, we demand it; for the very good reason that our children deserve much better.
They are most worthy of a climate in education where adults demonstrate maturity, respect, reasoning and mutuality for their charges’ patterning. Our children need to be rescued from this atmosphere of hostility, intransigence and going nowhere.
After the sideshow yesterday morning, the matter of the present and future of the students of Alexandra remains paramount. Prime Minister Stuart has vowed that the children there will not be short-changed, for as far as he is concerned they are right – above all others.
We agree and hope to God Mr Stuart will do right too.
