Rural closures leave parents struggling

WESTERN BUREAU:

Over the past decade, declining enrolment has led to the closure of four rural primary schools in western Jamaica, placing significant financial and emotional burdens on parents who now face the challenge of sending their children to schools farther from home.

Alps Primary and Infant School in Trelawny and Hillsbrook All Age School in Hanover were among 18 closed in September 2015 under the Portia Simpson Miller administration’s school rationalisation policy. The schools had small populations ranging from a low of 16 to a maximum of 68.

In 2017, New Castle Primary in Bethel Town, Westmoreland, followed suit under the Andrew Holness administration, and earlier this year, Salter’s Hill Primary School in St James also shut its doors.

Alps, a remote community with an estimated population of fewer than 500 people, lies between Jackson Town and Ulster Spring in the Cockpit Country. The community’s roads are in a poor state, forcing many farmers having to rely on donkeys to transport produce from the fields to the main road.

The former Alps Primary School has since been converted into the South Trelawny Edu-Skills Centre, a training facility supported by HEART/NSTA Trust. However, residents say the closure has disrupted their lives.

“It is really hard because mi used to just send my kids to right over Alps Primary and now mi have to find taxi fare to send them to Ulster Spring. Dem could walk home for lunch before and that can’t happen again,” said Gloria Evans.

Other residents shared similar frustrations last week as The Sunday Gleaner visited the hilly community which also struggles with limited cell service. Children from Alps now attend Ulster Spring Primary, Sawyers Primary, Jackson Town Primary, and even schools as far as Albert Town Primary.

“Sometimes mi nuh know how mi manage. It is really hard financially because this is a farming community and things are tough,” said one father, who shared that his children currently attend Ulster Spring Primary.

Another parent echoed his sentiments, explaining that she struggles to afford the education costs for her three children at a nearby school.

According to Evans, unreliable public transportation frequently causes children to be late for school.

The Ministry of Education attributes the declining enrolment to factors such as falling birth rates and migration. However, residents of New Castle in Westmoreland disputed this explanation, pointing instead to longstanding issues like the lack of potable water.

According to a group of men gathered at a community shop last Wednesday, parents were forced to remove their children from New Castle Primary out of fear of illnesses associated with a lack of potable water – a problem they have been battling for several years.

WATER CRITICAL

“Water is the main reason. No school can run without water. The kids have to defecate, urinate and wash hands. Hand, foot and mouth disease deh round here nuff. Over 18 years, no water nuh ‘round here and the road nuh good either. Why mi fi send my son up there and if he goes down to another school dem have water? Him can wash his hands and use bathroom freely at another school,” said a man who identified himself as Ricardo.

“Up at New Castle, dem did have a likkle tank pon the school compound and have fi ketch water then carry it go flush toilet. That makes no sense,” he bemoaned.

The small wooden structure that once housed the New Castle Primary School is currently unoccupied. Goats have taken over the yard and the once-vibrant wall paintings have faded.

Ricardo said that children from the community are enrolled in schools across Westmoreland and St James.

“There are a lot of children here. Most of them go to Bethel Town Primary, Chester Castle Primary, Anchovy, and even Cornaldi Avenue and Howard Cooke Primary in Montego Bay. They go very far away yet they had a school right here. Pickney from right at the school gate lef from there and go all the way to Howard Cooke Primary,” he said.

Residents near the former Salter’s Hill Primary School in St James expressed similar disappointment over its closure. The school is located at the end of a deteriorating roadway with no streetlights, further isolating the area.

“I feel so bad about it. You know when you take a fish out of water? That is the way I feel. I feel so disappointed and down because a community without a school is no community at all,” said Ainsworth Reid, a resident of the John’s Hall.

Reid, however, remains hopeful that the property could be repurposed to benefit the youth in the area.

“I don’t know if the Government would consider putting in a trade training centre because the facility is there, so they can use it to try and uplift the younger people in the community,” he said.

Danree Delancy, councillor for the Bethel Town division in Westmoreland, is also hoping to see efforts to restore and utilise the former New Castle Primary.

“It was being used by a club called Castleites, but in recent times, that club has become non-functional. Since then, the building has not been used for any positive purpose. I think some form of special classes could be held there. We could probably do some repairs to the building and have some form of training by HEART being carried out there. It would greatly benefit the community if we cater to young adults [and] people who have finished secondary education … but have not acquired the necessary levels to advance,” said Delancy, who is also the mayor of Savanna-la-Mar.

Ronald Thwaites is the former education minister in the Simpson Miller administration that closed 25 schools between 2014 and 2015. Speaking to The Sunday Gleaner last Friday, he acknowledged the difficult decisions involved in shuttering schools with low enrolment.

“It is neither advantageous, educationally nor financially, for us to have a very significant number of schools that are misaligned as far as the teacher-student ratio is concerned,” he said.

RURAL ECONOMIES DESTROYED

“The rural economy is being destroyed by many factors, and where our school no longer is serving a significant proportion of the community because that community is no longer there, then changes have to be made. They shouldn’t be made capriciously, but neither should we submit to some kind of entropy in the system that says, because the school is there, it can never change.

“When I served as minister, there were 100 or more primary schools where the population had declined drastically, and in some cases, you almost had as many teachers as students. The results for those students did not warrant the great expenditure of keeping those schools open and … a decision was taken, not one size fitting all, wherever possible, to consolidate the very small schools with nearby larger schools. And where necessary, to offer through PATH (Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education) a transportation allowance for those children who would be disadvantaged by not having school as close to them as before.”

Meanwhile, Thwaites said that efforts should be placed to maintain the former structures and keep life in the communities that once had these institutions. He pointed to the repurposed Alps Primary School as a model for other closed schools.

“What Mrs [Marisa] Dalrymple-Philibert and I discussed regarding the use of the Alps school is a good model, and I stress that it was done by joint consultation,” he said, referring to the member of parliament. “That infrastructure is being reasonably well used. Another way to use schools where the classrooms and facilities are in reasonable condition is to consolidate [primary] schools into an infant school in that same place, preventing you from having to build another structure.”

rochelle.clayton@gleanerjm.com