THE DECISION of the Ministry of Education to close Combermere School three weeks ago following persistent complaints from teachers and students who were falling ill, has raised a number of issues that stretch well beyond the precincts of Waterford.
High on that list must be the management of public properties such as schools – in particular, whether the systems we have employed over the last half-century are appropriate for today’s environment, particularly the economic component.
We may have to ask ourselves, for example, if a ministry or department occupies a particular building, should that automatically mean it is best placed to manage and maintain it?
What the Combermere situation has also returned to public discussion is the status of the long-closed Louis Lynch Secondary School campus in Whitepark Road, The City. After years of persistent complaints from staff and students that the environment was the primary contributor to their repeated symptoms of illnesses, the facility was closed in 2006.
A decade later, Louis Lynch is hidden behind a canopy of overgrown vegetation, but the solid concrete structure remains intact. It cannot be unreasonable ten years later to ask what is to become of a public property that must be valued at several million dollars in a prime commercial area.
We are not so naive as to believe that, given the circumstances that led to its closure, reopening Louis Lynch as an educational facility would be an easy task. In fact, we would go so far as to suggest that with the individual who led the fight of the Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) to close the school now holding the post of Chief Education Officer, anyone with such a thought is likely to have the battle of their life reactivating that complex.
But that does not negate the importance of Government making a determination of the future of the campus. In any event, the Louis Lynch Secondary campus has reverted to the control of Government’s principal landlord, the Ministry of Housing and Lands.
Only last week, retired head of the Environmental Protection Department Jeff Headley told one of our editors: “The Louis Lynch building can be used tomorrow. It is my view that the Louis Lynch building can be used tomorrow. The building is structurally sound and environmentally friendly and can be used.”
It cannot therefore be unreasonable to ask, at this stage, whether the supposed environmental issues that impacted Louis Lynch still exist; whether the physical environment had the capacity to naturally purge itself of whatever toxins might have been negatively impacting its occupants; and perhaps more importantly, whether man-made remediation, which was never attempted during the period of complaints or the decade that has followed, could return the place to a wholesome state – and confidence to the minds of those who would occupy it.
Maybe when the questions are asked, it may be discovered that none of the answers is positive; that perhaps a longer period is needed for the property to heal, or that the cost to the state of a man-made solution may be too expensive. But the sensible management of such a valuable state asset would suggest that the questions have to be asked.
In our current financial state, this country can ill afford to abandon any asset with real value, and Louis Lynch Secondary in the grand scheme of things is a valuable, even if badly neglected, asset.
If a state solution is not on the cards, then Government has a duty to taxpayers to liquidate the asset, get what it can for it, and allow someone in the private sector to make a hand of it.
Every year that an abandoned Government building remains idle, the cost of returning it to productive use escalates. Doing nothing does not seem like sensible management.