Today at the Escuela Segundaria Tecnica Mexico in San Roman Village, over 100 students reportedly did not come to school this morning. That’s after 23 teachers called in sick yesterday. It has all appearances a high school in crisis and the problem is squarely for the government to resolve. That’s because the school is government managed – and this afternoon, Minister of Education Patrick Faber and the Director of School Services, Yolanda Gongora visited. Our colleagues at Channel 10 from Orange Walk were there as they were confronted by angry parents who waited in the rain to demand change and that the Minister do something about Principal Juanita Lucas.
Parent #1,
“Honorable the main concern of the people out here is that there are rumors going out that Miss Lucas is saying that you cannot remove her from Escuela Mejico because you along with her are very good friends. That is the main concern of the people out here in the rural villages and the way she is treating the students, despite of their political affiliation, she is just treating everyone in a bad bad way and that is why the people are desperate and they want a change of board and they want the change of the principal. That is the main concern.”
Parent #2,
“We voted in a new government because we wanted change in every institution. We want the institution to be cleaned out, we don’t want no PUP in there. We want UDP in there.”
Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
[Responding to parents] “I am saying to you that we cannot play politics with education. Let us give the thing the due process, let us allow the investigative team to come in and then ask everybody, including yourselves, to give your views of what you want, what you want to see for the school.”
Fortunato Noble, Channel 10
“What’s happening here in Corozal?”
Patrick Faber,
“Well we don’t know, that is exactly the position. I have received complaints from members of the community. I have received complaints from the teachers and the heads of departments. Yesterday, Thursday, I had an audience with the principal along with the senior management of the Ministry of Education and at that time we agreed to send in a team to investigate exactly what is happening. My purpose for coming to this school today was to meet with the staff to just ask for their cooperation to get back to work so that we can give the process a chance.”
Fortunato Noble,
“At this point we don’t know what’s the cause of the problem?”
Patrick Faber,
“Well there are some complaints about working conditions and what is clear to us is that some of the teachers aren’t happy in the environment now. What is exactly causing them to be unhappy we are not certain and that is what we will investigate.”
Fortunato Noble,
“Sir reports coming to us are that over 20 teachers were absent yesterday, were sick, this is a crisis.”
Patrick Faber,
“Well indeed and these reports reached me in my office as early as from the time of my appointment and of course you know there are a lot of things that I had to do in those early days in my office and I had scheduled that meeting with the principal for yesterday to try to get a handle of what was going on and it was unfortunate that it was on that same day that the teachers decided to call in sick. But it sends the signal you know that all is not well here and that indeed something needs to be done. I am not sure that we can term it as a crisis because after a meeting with the teachers just now, all have agreed that everything would go back, well I can’t say normal, but at least as normal as we can make it on Monday.”
Student,
“When I came I got to know that the teachers called in sick. We were having nothing and I called my mom to tell her to come for me and when she came they didn’t make my mom take me home.”
Fortunato Noble,
“So the teacher reported sick?”
Student,
“Yes.”
Fortunato Noble,
“You think they are really sick?”
Student,
“No, sick of the administration.”
The tape came in late this evening, so we could only give you a snippet of what happened – but on Monday we’ll show you what the students have to say about the chaos at the school. A late evening Ministry of Education release says that the Ministry is confident that the situation will be amicably resolved.
