Lisa Isaacs
THE Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has abandoned plans to temporarily move Scottsdene Secondary School pupils to a vacant Eerste River school after the community blocked the attempton Monday because they were not consulted.
The Kraaifontein School was closed last month after engineers identified possible problems while inspecting the building, and the department promised pupils would be temporarily moved to the Eerste River school while contractors installed mobile classrooms at Scottsdene.
But community members gathered at the school before the arrival of the pupils yesterday in protest, forcing the department to cancel relocation plans.
Education MEC Debbie Schäfer said education officials had meetings with the community and the interim School Governing Body (SGB) to discuss plans.
“Early last week, it became apparent that certain members of the Eerste River community were opposed to the WCED plan,” she said.
“Some community members have allegedly vowed to block roads and stage protests so that the Scottsdene learners could not access the school.
“Given these threats and in the interest of pupil and educator safety, our officials have moved rapidly to arrange alternative accommodation.
“ The WCED will accommodate Grades 8 to 10 in a community hall in Scottsdene while Grades 11 and 12 will share nine existing prefabricated classrooms at Scottsdene Secondary School.”
The Department of Public Works has undertaken to fast-track the installation of mobile classrooms at Scottsdene, starting with 12 classrooms on the school’s parking lot this week and contractors have started civil works on the school’s sports fields to accommodate 14 mobile classrooms.
Public Works expects that it will take about three weeks to install these 14 classrooms, while a catch-up programme will be run during the September holiday.
Vincent Marino, of the interim SGB, said Monday that the community was excited at the prospect of a new primary school.
“We were very excited at the time as we all had a lot of small children. Last Wednesday, we heard on the radio that Scottsdene children were coming to our school. There was no consultation with our SGB,” he said.
“They already finalised with the Scottsdene parents, teachers and kids on the Wednesday night. We were only informed on the Thursday. We were very unsatisfied and we told the department that our community is not going to accept this.
Scottsdene principal Karel Cupido said he was not involved in consultations with the community, but will act in “doing our utmost best to get our pupils into classes”.