BHS students and teachers relocated

ZIZ Newsroom, November 27, 2012, Basseterre — The students and staff of the Basseterre High School have been moved out of the compound for the rest of the term while the investigation into the state of the labs there continues.

The majority of them have been relocated to various spots at Warner Park.

The move comes out of decisions made in a meeting between education ministry officials and the management of BHS.

Principal Carlene Henry Morton says so far the staff and students are doing their best to work with the temporary location.

“Most of the teachers have been very creative and innovative with their classes,” she said. “The children are very cooperative. I’m finding that we have settled in quite nicely, very quickly.”

She did note that they have had to cancel the end of term exams.

“We do not have a lot of the furniture and the pieces of equipment we would have used for exams and so we’re not going to bother to go through with the exams. It’s just two more weeks of school so instead we’d do a lot more revision, we’d go over the actual topics that they would have done for exams, and we’ll try our best to make sure that we keep the children occupied,” Mrs. Morton said.

The BHS principal said while most of the students are at the park, some others have been moved to other locations, such as the old Girls’ School.

“We have put our fifth formers there because there are tables and chairs there and we want the fifth form classes, in particular, to be as close as possible to what they would have done in regular school because we have to bear in mind that theses are CSEC students who are preparing for their overseas exams,” Mrs Morton said.

This move is expected to only last until the end of the term while tests are underway on air and surface samples taken from the BHS labs. In the meantime, Mrs. Morton says the teachers are making the best of the situation.

“Teachers are in the habit of having to adapt to new surrounding, new settings…we just have to make do,” she said. “Our primary focus is on getting teaching and learning done. And we’re going to do what we need to do to make sure that we accommodate our students and we do that to the best of our ability.”

Officials from the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute have sent off samples to the US for testing. They are trying to determine if any biological or airborne particles are responsible for the reported illnesses among staff and students. The results are expected in about three weeks.