The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

THE majority of teachers at T A Thompson Junior High School staged a sit out at the school yesterday over inadequate working conditions.

As the issues may take some time to address, the school will revert to a fully virtual programme until there is complete resolution, according to assistant shop steward with the Bahamas Union of Teachers Jon Montpetit.

He told The Tribune yesterday there were serious structural issues at the school’s main education block and the alternative was to work from another structure at the school.

However, that building only has one bathroom, which is not suitable for 200 children and teachers to use, he said. Additionally, some of the classrooms do not have proper ventilation and a few teachers have mobility issues that prevent them from walking between the three floors there.

Yesterday, Education, Technical and Vocational Training Minister Glenys Hanna Martin said the situation at T A Thompson was the result of years of neglect and “kicking the bucket down the road”.

“Firstly, the main academic block, it’s not suitable at all,” Mr Montpetit said. “They have to shut that down and they wanted us to work from the next half of the school.

“The main building has some structural issues going on at the moment. The principal made us aware and I am assuming that they just saw how bad it was Monday so to my assumption they are just getting light of this.

“The issue with the second half of the school is proper ventilation in some of the classrooms. That’s one issue. The next issue is bathrooms. There aren’t enough bathrooms for teachers and students for any grade level to come on.

“It’ll be very hard for 200 kids to use one bathroom. So, bathroom was an issue, ventilation was an issue and then we have some teachers who have mobility issues and therefore they can’t walk on the second and third floors.

“So, all of those. They were our three main concerns in terms of trying to work face-to-face.

“Like everyone else it was the intent to do the hybrid system but we didn’t know how bad the school was until we returned.”

Asked how soon the issues will be addressed, Mr Montpetit said while there was an understanding that the problems would be fixed as soon as possible, he was unable to state when this would be.

He said 90 to 95 percent of the more than 50 teachers at the school sat out in protest of the situation.

With news that the school will go back to fully virtual, the teachers will end their action and return to teaching from their computers.

When she was contacted yesterday, Mrs Hanna Martin said: “T A Thompson has serious issues. I went there myself and saw it with my own two eyes and this is the result of, and I have been advised by technical persons in the field, this is the result of prolonged neglect and patching and kicking the can down the road and deferring and procrastination and postponements and we now at the point where that entire block has to be shut down for proper holistic repair work.

“We keep coming up with issues that are not confronted or addressed on a continuous basis and as a result of that you have crisis after crisis after crisis.

“We have to come to a methodology and a cultural practice in the Ministry of Education, in the Ministry of Works, because the Ministry of Works has responsibility for these buildings, where we bite the bullet when the moment comes and just do it.

“Now I suspect that a big part of it might be resources. I don’t know what would have governed past deferments, but we do know however we got here. This is where we are.”

This comes after students returned to classrooms for face-to-face learning under a hybrid instruction model on Monday.