Fainting Students will get new classroom

Eleven standard six students at the St. Edmund R.C. School in Teakettle Village inexplicably fell ill and were briefly hospitalized on Friday. Some of them fainted, but all had the same symptoms of severe headaches, dizziness and nausea. The cause for their sudden illness is unknown and is still a mystery. The incident has left the affected students traumatized and with the spread of allegations about spiritual possession, many of them are afraid to go back into the church building, which is being used as a classroom. Since there is no other space for the standard six class, some of the children stayed at home today. A protest was expected to be staged at St. Edmund’s this morning, but instead there was a meeting to discuss the concerns of the parents. Cayo South Area Representative, Ramon Witz, has promised the school a new classroom building in the next few weeks. Witz says that a new school building is also in the pipeline, but that project is set to start later this year or early next year.

Ramon Witz, Area Representative, Cayo South

Ramon Witz

“We had a meeting this morning with concerned parents of standard six students, the school management and the ministry of education and we discussed basically what had happened last Friday. Parents are concerned that their children do not want to go back into the same classroom that they were using, which is the church. As a result of that, we have to get our children back to school. So I made a commitment to ensure that we get a classroom built for them since the catholic church was only being used until their building—which we are working on through the government, we’re getting a brand new building for them but construction won’t be until probably in December, January. So until that happens we can’t have our children out. We have to make sure that especially standard six, that is a critical year because of PSE and getting ready to go to high school, we need to make sure that they are there. So what we are doing right now is pooling together all our resources; parents, the school management, we’re coming together to build a classroom so they can feel more comfortable and the atmosphere will be more conducive to better learning.”

Delahnie Bain

“So how soon is that classroom expected to start?”

Ramon Witz

“Starting will be probably within a week’s time at the most. Getting it complete once we have the material takes about a week so in two weeks time they should be in a brand new classroom.  What we want to do is encourage parents to get their children into school and just give them the support that they need. We are not sure what exactly was the cause of the incident on Friday. Many experts are looking into it but they cannot come to a conclusion. But whatever it is, I want to tell parents and to tell everyone that myself and the government is committed to giving the support to these students as they pass through these difficult times.”

According to the Principal of St. Edmund R.C. School, the affected students are being given counseling sessions throughout this week to help them cope with Friday’s incident.