Give us the funds to tackle security ourselves, school principal tells gov’t

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Security is needed both during the day and outside school hours
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One educator is suggesting that funds should be allocated directly to schools so that they can take matters into their own hands to address plaguing issues like security.

Principal of the Princess Margaret School Dr Colin Greene made the suggestion while speaking on the Good Morning JoJo sports show on Wednesday.

He said such a move would also lift some weight off government, enabling it to focus on other areas of importance.

“I think the time has come, and I have been saying it a long time now, that schools should be budgeted for and some of the money be placed into the hands of the school itself because we could make better use of it,” Greene explained.

“There are a lot of things that peeves me about how we view education and how we view schools and if we don’t change that view, we are going to get a lot of the same thing.

“If we act on the right information and prioritise things, we are going to get better results.”

Dr Greene continued that there are two approaches to this matter as security is needed both during the day and outside school hours.

For the latter, he said there should be a mixed approach of both human and mechanical measures like security cameras.

As public discourse continues about the safety and security of public schools, Dr Greene is calling on those responsible for making administrative decisions to be “more proactive”, rather than reactive.

According to Dr Greene, appropriate policies must be conceptualised and put in place before incidents arise.

“The more you invest in the long-term positive, the better the results are going to be. What we are in this country is reactionary; we respond to every little thing but we are not policy-driven. We have to be policy-driven.

“Some men walk on to Clare Hall with a cutlass so we think about putting two police at Clare Hall. Nobody says how do we prevent that at PM, so the last man that walked in at PM didn’t make the news because somebody stone him out of the yard, but the point I am making is we need to be policy-driven.

“How many more times are we going to say that?” Greene asked.

The incident Greene referred to was an intrusion by weapon-wielding men last week at the Clare Hall Secondary School (CHSS).

The matter sparked outrage – including among parents and teachers at the school – and prompted renewed calls for a permanent solution to violence both within and against schools.

A decision in the case of CHSS was made to assign additional police officers to monitor the school grounds, but the question has been asked – what is being done to avoid such things happening at other schools?

When asked whether or not schools should stage fundraisers to address security concerns, Greene said he was “not in favour of that”.

He went on to say “the funds that we raise is to reinvest in the human capital to buy a spikes, to buy a shoes, I will burn my hand on the grill but not for those other things because it is happening otherwise”.

Greene’s comments come a day after another leading educator, Foster Roberts of the Ottos Comprehensive School, shared his views on the matter.

Roberts while also speaking on the Good Morning JoJo sports show said there needed to be an evaluation of the root causes of delinquent acts at schools.

He also called for strict adherence to current laws and for parents who fail to live up to their responsibilities to their children to be arrested.

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