Hundreds of students of the St. Ignatius Secondary yesterday protested the sudden resignation of the head mistress and a request made by two teachers for immediate transfers following an ongoing problem with another teacher.
Parents have since voiced their concern over the situation and are calling on the relevant regional officials to intervene.
Stabroek News was told that the students, numbering about 250, marched through the streets of the Region Nine community holding placards and shouting that they wanted back their headmistress.
Yvette Archer-Alexander, who had been attached to the school since 2009 and had managed to lift the standard from Grade C to Grade A, on Tuesday handed in her letter resignation letter, which takes effect on January 13 next year. The situation has also prompted her to resign from the teaching profession, to which she had dedicated 27 years of her life. The teachers who have asked to be removed teach Information Technology and Agriculture Science and are preparing students for CSEC examinations next year.
Stabroek News was told that that the students assembled in front of the Department of Education office but after doors were locked on them, they proceeded to the Regional Education Officer’s (REDO) office but they were sent away.
One parent told this newspaper that she finds it unbelievable that education officials would have accepted Alexander’s resignation letter so easily without making any attempts to reason with her so that she could remain in the post. The parent said that officials have just said that they have accepted the resignation and would find a replacement.
“Our concern is that this is an internal affair and it should have been dealt with a long time ago. It should not have been allowed to reach this stage. Our children are preparing for CSEC and they are the ones who will be suffering,” the parent stressed, adding that they had attempted to meet education officials to have the matter resolved but to no avail.
She explained that on Thursday, a group of about 30 parents turned up to see the REDO to seek answers but were not allowed to meet with her.
The parent questioned what will now happen to the standard of the school and especially the future of the almost 800 students if these three teachers are to leave.
Archer-Alexander, in a telephone interview with Stabroek News on Wednesday, had said that the teacher in question, who had been teaching Agricultural Science at the school since 2007, had been breaking all the rules set out by the Ministry of Education.
She explained that the Ministry’s code of conduct governs the teachers’ behaviour, including when they must report to school, their attendance and their classroom duties.
She said that the teacher in question is in breach of many of these codes, while adding that her predecessor had encountered a lot of the same issues with the very teacher.
Archer-Alexander explained that since the beginning of the term, the teacher had not written any notes of lessons, resulting in her (Archer-Alexander) writing and instructing her to complete them and submit same to her. However, this was never done. The teacher allegedly told her Head of Department (HOD) that she had spoken to the REDO and she was not going to be writing any notes of lessons and that “there is nothing the headmistress can do to make her write them.”
The School’s Board, before it was dissolved, had confronted the teacher and spoke to her strongly about her behaviour.
Stabroek News was, however, told that the entire situation reached a boiling point when the teacher in question wrote some derogatory remarks on a letter sent to her about her behaviour by her HOD and placed it on the school’s notice board for all to see. What was written on it was seen by students. The teacher also wrote a response to that letter, including inflammatory remarks, and pasted copies in different sections of the village for all to see.
Archer-Alexander put the two letters together and took it to education officials asking for an urgent intervention. Later, a meeting was held with regional officials, the teacher in question, the HOD and the headmistress. However, nothing came out of it and the HOD was left feeling powerless and the head mistress even smaller.
Archer-Alexander explained that the former education minister had appealed to her to go to the school even though she was appointed to the Bartica Secondary School. “I did it to help the children,” she stressed, noting that she was separated from her family when she took up the position.
When she entered St. Ignatius Secondary, the school had a 47% pass rate. The next year, it was 70%. She said that since she had arrived, the dropout rate at the school had decreased.
She described her decision to leave as an emotional one as she was just “fed up and tired.”
Meanwhile, the HOD told Stabroek News that the teacher in question would sit in the staff room, not go to class, would verbally abuse others and would not submit her school-related work on time. She said that every Tuesday, she would report to the headmistress that she had not received any note of lessons from that teacher.
The HOD said that based on the reports she was receiving, the teacher would take books from students from one class and give them to the students in the other classes to copy. “She does not work. Everyone else work, they all try to do what needs to be done,” she said, adding that the teacher’s behaviour was disrespectful. “I am applying for an immediate transfer. I can’t work under these circumstances,” she said.
