And after their tour of the city schools, the BNTU then went to Double Head Cabbage to visit another storm-damaged institution. The Belize Rural Primary School's roof was ripped off during Hurricane Lisa, and the contents of five classrooms were destroyed. Not to mention, the damaged roof revealed the bats that had been living right above the students.
The Ministry of Education is allowing them a three days grace period before they should reopen their doors, but according to the principal, there's no way they'll be able to get the kids into classes this week - and even if they do, it will have to be at the community center.
Sounds like an easy fix, except the center is also suffering from bat problems of its own. Today the principal told us more about their dilemma.
Marilyn Stephenson Robinson, Principal, Belize Rural Primary School
"As you can see, half of the roof have been removed and over on the other side, teachers had their stuff in the classrooms, many dollars spent on purchasing stuff for the new school year, Ms Ardette, from this class, is saying over $1,000 and that's only on stuff prepared for the new school year but there were tons of stuff, books, resources, soap on this side where the roof is missing, if you notice the floor, it is wet, it is dirty, it is muddy, and this is not all, if you had been here earlier this morning you would have seen the amount of dirt and stuff that came down from here, the bat droppings all over in the corners if you can look over there, they're coming down."
"When I came here Thursday afternoon, I screamed out because it was like, wow, shocking, it was really shocking to see the classrooms and all the wet stuff along this side, a few of those on the other side because of the water blowing in so it was really devastating to see."
"The local manager was here and she spoke with the chairperson of the community who promised to have us use the community center but even that has problems with the bat and so they are sealing it off. They're saying three days but I don't think three days will be enough for them to do that. I would say maybe this entire week for this upper site to be ready, so maybe by Monday I would say."
Courtney Menzies:
"How is that space- I know it's not as ideal as a classroom but how will it work in terms of, they have to be separated and taught at their level?"
Marilyn Stephenson Robinson, Principal, Belize Rural Primary School
"I know it's something we have to think about because the community center has windows both corners and it's closed up like that but definitely we are going to have to do some makeshift partition or something so that we can separate them."
"I think it's going to be kind of congested the way the center is because there are no windows on that side only on this side so the person in the middle would be in trouble."
Courtney Menzies:
"And to your knowledge, are there any teachers or students dealing with their own homes being destroyed?"
Marilyn Stephenson Robinson, Principal, Belize Rural Primary School
"Yes miss, we have students whose roofs went off and I think especially in Willows Bank we have two or three families whose roof went off and we have student living in those families as well."
According to the chairman of the village, Roman McCulloch, they will begin working on the community center tomorrow to fix the roof so that the area is safe for the students to use - and so they're not inhaling the bat droppings.
They've also received a donation from the Caribbean International Brewery of $5,000 to assist with fixing the damages to the primary school.
