And with the efforts being made to keep children in school on the southside, Hyde was appalled that there were students who were being denied access to classes in Orange Walk over something as simple as their haircut. Hyde lamented passionately that students have missed out on too much during the pandemic to be out of class at this point, and added that there are much larger issues to worry about than students' haircuts.
Cordel Hyde, Acting Prime Minister
"It's really sad that after a two-year pandemic, that is what we're discussing right now, you know. Right, right now, we have a big problem in terms of all our kids lost in those two years. They lost a lot and nobody's really talking about that, you know. The losses, the step back, the fall off is incalculable. And that has to be our focus. Our job has to be, as government, as educators, as institutions, is to make sure kids stay in school. It can't be so easy to deny a kid an opportunity to be in school, like that has to be absolute last resort. And so for me, that's not a conversation we should be having right now, you have to be working with the parents, yes, you have to be working as a team but let's talk to each other, let us work these things out, like that is not the biggest problem we have right now, we have far greater problems, and the bottom line is to get kids in school and make sure they are learning and try to make up for all the times that they've lost because the truth of the matter is, kids weren't learning a whole lot during those two years, they weren't reading books during those two years, they weren't really engaged enough online with education during those two years. So, we have major major problems and we have to figure that out going forward."
All of the student sin Orange Walk were back in the classroom from the following day and some of them did cut their hair.
