From left, Alphansus Davis - principal, Spaldings High, Clarendon, and Hopeton Henry - principal, Seaforth High, St. Thomas
Glenda Anderson, Staff Reporter
THE THREAT of hard times ahead has not been discouraging to several reclassified schools as they find very creative and practical ways to fend for themselves.
One rural high school, with a student population of 2,100 now operates three tuck shops, a bookshop and is seeking to have its areas of practical studies become income-generating avenues.
"We operate three tuck shops one of which is solely dedicated to sports, selling products for basketball, netball and cricket. Our school bookshop sells from stationery to uniforms and everything else for which students would shop around outside. Our farm is also operated on a commercial basis with poultry and goats, which we sell to our school canteen," Hopeton Henry, principal of the Seaforth High School in St. Thomas, said of efforts to fill the gaps left through limited Government funding.
Mr. Henry said the school had saved more than $80,000 by divesting the canteen and cutting its electricity bill by more than half (down from $92,000).
"We're now looking to commercialise other aspects like woodwork and metalwork and looking into the issue of creating jobs for our students," Mr. Henry said.
In other areas, he said the school was concentrating on projects to assist needy students with food vouchers at $50 per day from the canteen's surplus funds.
For one other school, praedial larceny has limited its options at income generation.
PARTNERSHIP
Alphansus Davis, principal of the Spaldings High School, says the school instead developed a dynamic partnership with the Parent Teachers Association (PTA).
"We have an agreement with parents where they suggested we cut out the fund-raising and instead they make a yearly contribution of $350 for PTA fees and $350 for student council fees, and. out of this allowance, which comes to roughly over $1 million each year we are able to do wonderful things.
"We were able to purchase a school bus, build a conference centre, refurbish the school canteen, and bought eight fans for the auditorium, all from the tremendous support of the PTA."
To deal with the problem of overcrowding, Mr. Davis said the school again relied on its PTA funds and support and over a period of eight years built 16 classrooms to accommodate extra students sent by the Ministry in successive years.
"We have learnt how to pinch our pennies to help ourselves in order to better cater to the needs of the students," he said.
At Papine High School in St. Andrew the agricultural department boasts its own savings account from money earned in rearing poultry and selling vegetables like sweet pepper, pak choi, tomatoes, peas and cabbage.
But while this was originally for the school canteen, the farm also fills orders for pan chicken vendors and small business persons in the wider community and school staff.
The school looks to hire a farm-hand to assist with weekend and after-school care of the farms but for now students volunteer or are asked to to come in on weekends to feed and water the birds.
Last Friday, the farm slaughtered its last term batch of 300 chickens.
COMMERCIALISATION
Principal Cynthia Peart says the project has also been used to boost the school's sports programme.
"The sports feeding programme assists students who are involved in track and field, football, netball and hockey. They are provided with a cooked meal every day but especially in the sporting season. Maybe about two weeks leading up to the games they are given special lunches, meals and snacks at training sessions. Even on the weekends when they come up for training, they are given a nutritional meal to help with their training needs.
The school is looking to expand the farm complete with perimeter fencing to ward off praedial thieves. The automotive and cosmetology departments also have plans for commercialisation.
Last month, automotive student Kevin Needham received a trophy for placing second in the cosmetology/barbering category in the National Skills Competition. The school is now planning to expand and commercialise the work of the department.
Recently, some schools complained of limited Government funding which had cut into budget and threatened to curtail activities.
In addition, some reclassified schools reported that they faced closure from mounting bills which could not be offset by fees collected or money promised by the Government.
