Students, teachers happy to be back at L.T. Gay

Parents are hoping that this term goes “smoothly” at the Lawrence T Gay Memorial School where, for the first time since October, all students and staff gathered for the start of classes on Tuesday.
This followed an announcement from the Ministry of Education that the Spooner’s Hill, St Michael school was fit for teaching.
President of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) Steffanie Williams told Barbados TODAY that while parents were glad classes resumed at the school plant, they were hoping the odour that caused the closure on numerous occasions, does not resurface.
“We had a meeting with the ministry Saturday on Zoom and about 50 parents attended. Right now parents would be hoping that going back in this term, things would have improved and that we won’t have the same problems as before. The displacement has really been hard. So we are hoping that this term goes smoothly,” she said.
Meanwhile, after a site visit at the compound on Tuesday, Chief Education Officer Dr Ramona Archer-Bradhsaw told the media that the ministry did all it could to determine the source of the odour but none was identified.
“From mid October we as a ministry decided that we will engage other ministries and private partners in determining the possible source of the odour that was perceived by some of the staff members and some of the students. We engaged in a number of tests, we checked to ensure that the wells were sealed and that there was no leakage of gas coming from any of the septic tanks around the compound.
“The Ministry of Health and Wellness also performed checks in the surrounding areas. We partnered with an air quality testing firm, they came in and performed air quality tests. We recognise also that there were a number of tyres on the compound and the principal worked with the team at the Ministry of Education to have those tyres removed. We endeavoured to eliminate any possible source of the perceived odour,” she said.
After analysing all of the results, Archer-Bradshaw said the ministry made the decision that teachers and the students could come back to the plant “given that all of the findings indicated that there is nothing in the atmosphere at the L. T. Gay Memorial Primary School at present that could be hazardous to health.
(SZB)