Erica Virtue, Staff Reporter
SEVERAL of the city's schools which watched their population dwindled significantly because of violence in the 1990s are now experiencing a revival.
More and more parents are again sending their children to classes in the so-called volatile communities of the Corporate Area, according to some principals.
As schools like St. Albans Primary, Denham Town Com-prehensive and Rema Basic in western Kingston closed their doors for the Christmas break, statistics show their registers are growing.
Educators say this is a reflection of the falling rate of crime in the communities where the schools are sited, and the continued presence of the police.
Principal of the St. Albans Primary, Jean DaCosta, said enrolment at her school for the 2000-2001 academic year which started in September is encouraging. "We had an enrolment of 1,300 up to 1995. But the violence caused that to drop to about 250. However, at the beginning of the school year, we have seen increases in our enrolment," she said last week.
Today, 460 students attend classes at St. Albans.
The police presence, which has been a fixture at that school over the last two school years, has been cut back, she said. "The police officer does not come every day as was the case when it began," she explained. In 1996, the Ministry of National Security and Justice sent police personnel to patrol schools in mainly inner-city communities as crime spiralled out of control.
The number of children at the Rema Basic has also seen a jump. "Violence had reduced enrolment significantly at that school. The population was between 180 and 200 and that fell to about 20. However, there are now some 140 children there," said Mrs. DaCosta of the population at Rema Basic, a feeder school for her institution.
At Denham Town Compre-hensive High, one of those schools deemed heavily overstaffed, "the children are coming back", said principal Clover Thompson. "We had an enrolment of 2,500 students. We dropped to less than half of that, but within three months, we have noticed that the children are coming back." A total of 1,269 students now take classes at the school.
Principal of the Donald Quarrie Comprehensive High in Harbour View, Kingston, Stannard Williams, said that the numbers at his school are also showing growth which in some instance resulted from students fleeing violence in other areas.
"We are now about four or five short of 1,700 students. This is an increase from just over 1,600 last year," he said on Friday.
Noting that the school did not have a problem with violence, he dismissed the Ministry of Education's statement that the school was overstaffed. "I do not know how the Ministry arrived at its figures. But we have checked and re-checked and submitted to them documentary evidence that there is no overstaffing here," he said.
The body which represents the island's educators, the Jamaica Teachers Association (JTA), has also been receiving reports of increased attendance at schools cited in so-called troubled areas of the city, including some those institutions deemed overstaffed. JTA General Secretary Eric Downie pointed out that violence was the main reason for the mass migration and the resulting overstaffing, but he said, students would return as soon as there was a lull.
But the news is not all good. Edith Dalton-James Comprehensive High in Duhaney Park, St. Andrew, said its numbers were falling, while students continue to flee Chetolah Park Primary in Hannah Town. Fewer than 100 students were admitted in the last school year
