STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Teach­ers and stu­dents of Spey­side Sec­ondary claim they are un­der siege and be­ing ter­rorised by a Form One stu­dent.

The male stu­dent has al­leged­ly ver­bal­ly as­sault­ed sev­er­al teach­ers, phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed a fe­male teacher and sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed a stu­dent.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands two po­lice re­ports have been made about the child to the Char­lot­teville Po­lice Sta­tion. How­ev­er, de­spite two vis­its to the school by of­fi­cers, sources claim there has been no change in the boy’s be­hav­iour.

Speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, a fe­male school of­fi­cial claimed staff are be­ing dis­re­spect­ed dai­ly by the child. She said, “He is not tak­ing any or­ders from au­thor­i­ty what­so­ev­er. He is very dis­rup­tive. There is no day that pass­es that he is not in the (Prin­ci­pal’s) of­fice.”

Last week, he al­leged­ly barged in­to a teacher as she stood in a door­way. Ac­cord­ing to a source at the school, two re­ports were made last week of the boy spit­ting on his school­mates as they left the des­ig­nat­ed school maxi head­ing home. An­oth­er re­port was made re­cent­ly that the boy touched an­oth­er stu­dent in their pri­vate parts. Mul­ti­ple sources claimed the er­rant be­hav­iour of the stu­dent be­gan from day one, as he was sus­pend­ed in the first term of the aca­d­e­m­ic year. He then spent al­most the en­tire sec­ond term in a de­ten­tion cen­tre in Hope. The de­ten­tion cen­tre ac­com­mo­dates stu­dents who have been sus­pend­ed for se­ri­ous breach­es and pro­vides per­son­alised coun­selling.

How­ev­er, the stu­dent was al­leged­ly sus­pend­ed from the de­ten­tion cen­tre af­ter get­ting in­to a fight there. Of­fi­cials at Spey­side Sec­ondary com­plained that there was no plan to rein­te­grate him in­to the class­room af­ter leav­ing the cen­tre.

Staff de­scribed the child as very ag­gres­sive and an in­sti­ga­tor of sev­er­al al­ter­ca­tions. An of­fi­cial said dur­ing one of the fights he got in­volved in, a se­cu­ri­ty guard in­ter­vened. How­ev­er, the boy al­leged­ly threat­ened the se­cu­ri­ty by say­ing he would say he was sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed if they touched him. The of­fi­cial said the stu­dent al­so threat­ened to stab his Form teacher and “call his boys” for an­oth­er teacher. Staff said they are fear­ful ow­ing to the un­pre­dictable and un­sta­ble be­hav­iour of the child.

Asked about the in­volve­ment of par­ents, an of­fi­cial claimed they are al­so fed up with the sit­u­a­tion.

A meet­ing was re­port­ed­ly sched­uled up­on his re­turn to the school this term, but nei­ther par­ent at­tend­ed. “No­body is com­ing to rep­re­sent him for us to sort out and know the way for­ward that we can all live the way we sup­posed to at Spey­side High School.”

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, TTUTA To­ba­go Of­fi­cer De­on Ro­driguez de­scribed the in­ci­dents as to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able. “Any form of as­sault, any form of threat to a teacher, we do not take those types of ac­tions light­ly. As an as­so­ci­a­tion, we are go­ing to look in­to the mat­ter fur­ther to get to what is hap­pen­ing at Spey­side Sec­ondary with this stu­dent. The health and safe­ty of our teach­ers are of ut­most im­por­tance.”

Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Or­lan­do Kerr said he was un­aware of the sit­u­a­tion but was very con­cerned by the al­le­ga­tions.

“The num­ber-one pri­or­i­ty of the di­vi­sion is to en­sure all our stu­dents and all our teach­ers are safe. If this was brought to our at­ten­tion, we would have treat­ed it with the se­ri­ous­ness it de­serves.”

How­ev­er, he urged all stake­hold­ers to use the es­tab­lished chan­nels to ad­dress their con­cerns as the di­vi­sion can­not re­spond to is­sues aired in the me­dia with­out ver­i­fi­ca­tion.