DEPENDING ON WHOSE VOICE you are hearing, the current closure of the Combermere School is the result of negligence, sabotage or some yet to be diagnosed problem.
Regardless of the cause though, what is without dispute is that more than 1 100 children enrolled in one of the island’s leading secondary schools have not been to classes for more than two weeks – and there is still no idea when they will be returning to the classroom.
Coming on the heels of a number of other temporary cessations of classes as a result of the ill effects on students and staff of some strong odour, and the undertaking from the Ministry of Education earlier to conduct a full environmental investigation, this latest closure and promise of another probe could very well be responsible for the lack of confidence among many of the parents, teachers and their union.
It would be less than reasonable to expect that nothing will ever go wrong. In an institution the size of Combermere, operating on a campus that is half a century old, things will “break”. What seems to be the problem at Combermere is the floundering of officials as they supposedly seek a solution.
Perhaps if those responsible had taken the stakeholders and the public into their confidence and had shared with them the results of the last set of investigations, there would be more trust in what is being said, or not said, this time around.
If our records are accurate, personnel from the Ministry of Labour, Environmental Protection Department, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Pan-American Health Organisation and a private environmental firm were all involved. Many months later, the public is yet to hear anything about the report that arose from these probes.
But that may be asking too much, given that this modus operandi is very consistent with the way so many providers of public services operate these days. Since the students and teachers started complaining, at the root of their misery has always been some “smell”.
And since that time, authorities have looked within the school at septic and sanitary facilities, gas lines and even mould. They have looked outside the campus at potential irritants such as a riding stable upwind and vegetation on surrounding vacant land. One by one these were ruled out – or so we have been led to believe.
If in the face of all this we accept that the cause is still eluding the investigators, what is not acceptable is that the closure of the school suggests that those responsible at the Ministry of Education had no contingency plan for an escalation in complaints. We know for a fact that from the time school opened in early September, students and teachers started complaining and falling ill. The decision to close the school came in the final weeks of the current term.
In all the intervening time, did education administrators, as well as the management and board of Combermere, not think it prudent to prepare for a worst-case scenario? We would hate to believe that simply shutting down the campus was the contingency plan of authorities.
Unfortunately, time is not on the side of those who are in charge. Since the closure was announced on November 14, our 50th anniversary of Independence celebrations have taken centre stage, and shortly we will all be in Christmas mode. We ought not to be so poor in our planning as to allow the start of the next school term in January to find us with the Combermere campus still closed and the children at home.
If this latest round of investigations fails to conclusively identify the source of the complaints, authorities must have an alternative location identified and ready to accommodate the Combermere students. We can do better. We must do better.
