Last night, I attended the Town Hall meeting at West End Primary with several of my Opposition colleagues. We wanted to continue our support for keeping West End Primary School and take the opportunity to hear what the Government’s position is.
It has always been strange to me to see the Government work so hard to create conflict with some of its historically strongest supporters.
The scoring system used to select what sites would be suitable for future school builds or refurbished schools was a point of contention right from the first announcement. The difference is that West End has multigenerational support with a strong group of voices that cannot be ignored.
The Minister tried his best to ignore them, but their resilience seems to have worn the Government down. The Parent Teacher Student Association from St George’s has also been battling back but the video footage of the Minister showed he was planning to turn a deaf ear.
Last night’s meeting was interesting because the message from the West End Warriors hasn’t changed. West End Primary School’s physical location and its social symbolism as a beachhead against racial segregation serves as a memorial to those who braved discrimination to educate thousands of Black people through the years, makes it a natural hub of Sandy’s parish.
Although it scored a mere five percentile points behind Somerset Primary School in the Ministry’s decision-making matrix (Proposal for the Introduction of Primary Schools December 2020), its cultural significance as one of the oldest schools in the western hemisphere is being ignored.
The Minister and the Premier seemed very reluctant to show any real change to their original plan to axe West End even in the face of such significant pressure from the attendees of the town hall. The major announcement was supposed to be that the Government has agreed to re-evaluate the scoring that was used to determine whether West End Primary School should close. The crowd in attendance did not trust the process and was determined to make sure that they were not simply going to re-evaluate using the same flawed system.
The final comments by the Premier after the mounting pressure and questions regarding whether the truth was being told, opens further questions.
If there is going to be re-evaluation what changes will be made to the scoring system? We heard that a history and legacy component will be added as requested by the West End Warriors but is that the only change to be made to the flawed system?
*The Premier mentioned that the new schools that will be built and the Minister will not have to worry about funding.
What is the cost of these new buildings or major refurbishments and where will the funds come from?
As the Minister and Premier continued to talk about having to take decisions that are able to hold up to scrutiny, how will these changes create a re-evaluation that can be held accountable?
Firstly, the lack of transparency on the first scoring process led to all of the current issues. How were the points created? Why were these the only points and who did the evaluation?
Now that the Premier and Minister have reluctantly admitted the original mistake, they will have to fix the problem of how all schools were scored. It is a shame that two schools have already met the axe and now the government may move the goal posts. Will the axed schools be reconsidered?
The One Bermuda Alliance continues to agree with the initiative to reduce the number of school buildings due to Bermuda’s declining birthrate, the mass exodus of students from the Bermuda Public School System and the number of families emigrating because of the escalating cost of living under the Progressive Labour Party Government.
There are questions about what happens to the closed sites. What is the plan for these properties and when will these plans be revealed?
I still have a major question that was not answered. Why would the Burt administration choose this fight with the Somerset community? They met resistance to this decision immediately but have continued to dig in regardless of the strong opposition. What are we missing in this equation?
It will be interesting to see if they eventually make a complete about-turn and keep West End so that they can celebrate saving what they had threatened. This would follow their normal behaviour of creating a problem and then patting themselves on the back for coming to the rescue.
Thank you to the West End Warriors for taking such a strong stand on this issue. You have the added weapon of history and legacy to strengthen your fight.
Now it has given a spotlight to the flaws in the scoring which may give other schools a stronger voice and a better chance.