Samuel Haynes Building Is New Venue for St. Mary’s School Classes
Parents of children attending Saint Mary’s Primary School in Belize City attended a meeting at Saint Mary’s Church on Monday evening to discuss new developments regarding their children’s classes. Last week, after it became news that the existing schooling building on Gabourel Lane would have to be demolished, the roughly three hundred children were given work-from-home packages to keep up with their schoolwork. But now, there’s been a breakthrough in that the school has been offered the Samuel Haynes building on the next side of the city as their new school ground for the next two years. But if the new location for classes is a bit out of reach for kids who had only to turn a lane before they could see their classroom before, well the Ministry of Education will provide free transportation to and from Saint Mary’s to Samuel Haynes campuses. News Five was at Saint Mary’s and spoke with parent, Brenda Augustine, who would have liked nothing better than to have her son attend classes at his old school campus. But General Manager of Anglican Schools, Doctor Jeremy Cayetano, told us that won’t be possible for now, since most of the students will be relocated for the foreseeable future.
Jeremy Cayetano
Dr. Jeremy Cayetano, General Manager, Anglican School
“Fortunately, for us, we got an offer to use another space rather than here. We have been, over the past days, exploring that option, and today we brought three options to our parents. Option one being the use of that space, which is the Samuel Haynes Centre, where we will bus the children from St Mary’s to the Samuel Haynes Centre and then bus them back at the end of the day. The parents overwhelmingly voted for that option and so we’re going to be putting that in place, with the help of the Ministry of Education for the bussing. We have asked for the use of the space for two years with the option of extending that time if there’s need. Now, standard two to standard six (students) will be over at the Samuel Haynes building. Infant one, infant two and standard one will be over here, so that the buildings that we have already paid for we’ll be able to use.”
Brenda Augustine
Brenda Augustine, Parent, St Mary’s Primary
“Most people vote fi mek dehn ker dehn backa Martin’s da Sameul Haynes’ soh that da the option weh wi di work with now. Dehn seh that dehn mi wa have hopefully starting next year dehn wa bring new buildings da back deh soh whereby the kids dehn wa could come back to dehn original (compound) and I think that da the best because moving kids from one location to another location has a lotta thing fi do with it. If yoh wa place wa kid from one school into another school among other students weh dehn nuh really know, some ah dehn nuh wa really perform, maybe dehn get ill-treated.”
