It's been a series of unfortunate events at Sadie Vernon high all this week. On Wednesday, a stranger who wanted to settle a score with a student strode into the compound. On Thursday a teacher was arrested by police allegedly for threatening a member of the PTA. And today a second form student was stabbed, reportedly by a former student at ten this morning. With that, classes had to be cancelled for the day.
Now all this is happening in the middle of exam time - and so today the teachers - those who came to school - called on the minister of education to intervene.
He has been reluctant to do so because - while it is a government school - it is run by a board. But Faber says he came as a sort of friend to try and mediate matters:
Hon. Patrick Faber, Mnister of Education
"They came to find me and it was to say that they would really like to have a sit down with you and that sit down was granted and so I believe there were maybe two of three teachers missing from the meeting just now but all of them came to speak with me. I met with the principal - we came up with an understanding that business will get back to normal in terms of them being there for the students over the rest of this school year and after they have handed in their grades I will come myself once again to sit down with them to work out some of these issues and to highlight some of the areas that would need to be address and ten to leave it with them and maybe some other professionals to work it out so that these things do not re-occur in the new school year."
"We have had a number of incidents that are unfortunate and some of the teachers came to me this morning to ask me if I can come and meet with them. I made clear to them when that ask for that meeting and I agreed that it would not be a kind of thing where they would come to me and I would guarantee them some kind of immediate action. I came here merely to try to talk to both the administration and the teachers to see if we could arrive at some understanding that we can go back to business as normal for the sake of the students who of course this time taking examinations - are preparing for their exams next week who are engage in CXC examinations for their betterment for us to have some peace and calm to the situation so that we can work on plans to improve the situation here at Sadie Vernon."
"I am meeting with all parties here to try to create some better systems so that when the news school year starts some of these things that are caused clearly by some of these structures not being in place will not repeat itself and we could see some smoother sailing."
Reporter
"Minister, can you speak to us about the incident with the student?"
Hon. Patrick Faber, Mnister of Education
"Actually we did not get into the nitty gritty of the incidents. What we were more concern about was what causes the things to pop up so frequently. The situation of Wednesday for instance occurred because an individual just came into the compound and that has to be as a result of not having a proper security plan and that is the kind of thing that we have been trying to work out."
All side have agreed to a gag order while this intervention is given a chance to work.
