Ministry officials absent from Sadie Vernon meeting…

The Sadie Vernon School in Belize City has closed for the summer holidays but that does not mean its problems are over. Earlier this week there was anticipation that positive answers would have emerged from a meeting between the Parent Teachers’ Association of the School and Ministry of Education representatives. But while parents turned up, the Ministry did not and the school is still waiting to hear from Belmopan. According to President of the P.T.A., Olga Gordon, an investigation sanctioned by the Ministry has fallen short on allegations made by the teachers against the principal, Laura Baptist. Gordon told us today what happened on Tuesday evening and why they are not happy about the way the Ministry is handling the situation.

Olga Gordon, Vice President, P.T.A., Sadie Vernon
“While we were waiting in the room for the Education team, the principal and the chairlady were trying to get Mr. Lopez to come over. He didn’t answer his phone, he didn’t answer his text so parents got annoyed, they got upset just sitting there from like quarter to five just waiting knowing that we had this meeting before.”

Delahnie Bain
“Have you been given any reasons as to why the people from the Education Center didn’t come out?”

Olga Gordon
“So far to this moment, not yet.”

Delahnie Bain
“No one has been in contact…”

Olga Gordon
“I called the principal to find out if they called her, if they said anything to her why they didn’t show up. She said no, nobody called. Why we got upset because all we heard that they were going to do an audit of the school. An audit to me, you’re searching for money. That’s how I see it, I might be wrong and they wanted to meet with parents, they wanted to meet with the board, they wanted to meet with students and all this was done with teachers. When they went to Sadie Vernon to meet with the teachers, the principal didn’t know anything about it. She didn’t know they are coming in to find out about her; she didn’t know anything. We had seventeen teachers who were sick one day and after that Education gave them all the attention. How could seventeen teachers be sick one day? And after they were sick, they come up with all these allegations and they gave these to Education. Now they should have said to the principal, come over. Principal we have all these allegations about you we want you to defend your title. This was not done.”