Jones: Someone ‘jumped the gun’

Parents of the students of Alma Parris Memorial Secondary School are not happy with the way they found out about the closing of the institution.

However, Minister of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, Ronald Jones, acknowledged that the situation was not handled correctly as someone “jumped the gun” with the news.

His confession came during a brief interview with the media following a meeting at his Ministry yesterday evening. The meeting was held by Ministry officials to inform parents of the school of the next step in their children’s
educational future.

“There’s always a process to follow. Unfortunately, somebody rushed out and put this matter into the public’s face,” he lamented.

The Education Minister expressed that they would have taken the matter to the public after they had their initial discussions and went through the proper procedures, such as informing the school board and the Cabinet and finding solutions to the problems.

“We did some little preliminary things quietly, but somebody went and gush it out all over the place and that did cause some consternation, and that is why parents would find themselves in this situation,” he explained.

Jones noted that in a perfect world, the parents would have been notified and informed before the public even caught wind of the situation, but unfortunately, the reality is that the parents were not informed beforehand which means this is something they needed to deal with now.

The Minister assured that the parents would not have to worry about whether or not their children would continue to be educated as they would have been contacted and informed which school their child would be attending come September.

He explained that they chose three secondary schools - Daryl Jordan Secondary School, Grantley Adams Secondary School and St. George Secondary at which to allocate the students of Alma Parris. He said that there is more than enough space at these schools to accommodate the children based on the low number of students admitted there following the 2017 BSSEE results.