Hope Creek Villagers hopeless about changes in school system

On Monday, we reported that Government intends to amalgamate the Hope Creek Catholic Primary School with the Hope Creek Methodist School. The Ministry of Education laid out its position on how it proposes to merge both schools which would then be administered by the Methodist Church.  But as they say, denominations do not mix well, and after a meeting that ended late Monday evening between the Parent Teacher’s Association and Ministry officials, no definitive resolution was met on the two bones of contention.  When News Five visited Hope Creek Village on Monday, the parents had two concerns: one, that government’s decision to separate the new school’s lower and upper division would put the children at immediate risk.  That’s because the Ministry’s proposal was to have the students of the upper division at the newly built two storey concrete structure in the new site of the village.  But the lower division students would attend classes almost a mile away.  The parents say that having their young ones traversing on the highway is their biggest fear.  Their other concern was over the proposal that the Methodist Church would run the school, when the majority enrollment comprises Catholic and Anglican students.  After meeting the teachers earlier in the day, Ministry officials met with parents but the only new proposal coming out of that meeting was to reverse their previous plan and now have the lower division students attend classes at the new building in the village, while the upper division students would go to the other building down the highway. But this did not go down well with parents, and the officials left saying they would go back to the drawing board and come back with a new plan by August before school re-opens.