PHILIPSBURG--Windward Islands Teachers Union (WITU) President Claire Elshot said on Thursday that public-school teachers are fed up with working in classrooms that leak every time it rains and she is calling on government to remedy the concern post-haste.
Elshot said teachers of Ruby LaBega Primary School in Retreat Estate had complained to the union about their classrooms being flooded out after the heavy downpour of rain on Wednesday morning. Teachers of that and other schools spent a good portion of the morning mopping up water on floors and cleaning after the rain before they could get a chance to teach.
The situation is so bad in some of the classrooms that teachers have to cover all their classroom materials at the end of every school day to protect them in the event that it rains before school resumes the following day. Elshot said the situation is frustrating to educators and has to be remedied sooner rather than later.
Also of concern to public-school teachers is the outsourcing of the cleaning of the schools to a company without prior notification. The teachers and schools say that many of the previous cleaners had been working at certain public schools for many years and had become like family. Schools did not even get a chance to bid farewell to the cleaners and express their appreciation to them because of the manner in which it was done. Also, the previous cleaners would be in school to assist teaches with things such as clean-up when classrooms are flooded and other mishaps that occur during the school day. However, cleaners from the outsourced company only show up at a certain time of the day, which means the schools are left on their own for incidents that occur before the cleaners arrive.
