7 News Belize

The Other Side Of The Walkout
posted (November 6, 2012)
After the students were sent home by the Administration, members of the BNTU arrived on the campus and met with the faculty of the Belmopan Baptist High School.

While those meetings were being conducted, the members of the Ministry of Education and the General Manager of the school met with the principal and vice-principal in a separate room.

After both sides held their separate meetings, the faculty sat down and had a 4-hour discussion on all of those problems. After they came out, we spoke to both sides what this discussion yielded.

Here's what they told us:

Luke Palacio
"The meeting like you rightly indicated took quite a bit of time and we were there dealing with a number of issues. Basically what has stood out in this discussion is that the entire management of this institution does have a number of problems that needs to be address including the manner in which they have appointed their board members. We find that to be very disturbing. There is the whole issue of communication; miscommunication, bad communication at the institution. Our teachers and members here at this institution have become very frustrated. We were here earlier in the month of October trying to resolve some of these issues and we are like back to square one. At the end of this evening's meeting though we have agreed that the teachers will come back to school tomorrow and so classes should resume on the condition that; we are going to meet with the board of management of this institution either on Monday or Tuesday of next week to address these issues and secondly, that none of our teachers will be reprimanded for the action they took today."

"In terms of the acting principal; she was appointed according to the approval from the teaching services commission for a period of 3 months which means from September to November she should have been acting as principal. The position has been advertise, again these are under some questionable circumstances. The teachers did indicate that they were not satisfied in which the manner of the advertisements were placed. Nonetheless, whatever the board here decides in terms of the selection of somebody to become the principal be it the current principal or somebody else - that is subject to approval of the teaching services commission. We are going to await the outcome of that decision of the teaching service commission."

"The principal has been more in a state of denial; everything she denies, find reasons why certain things are done. The bottom line that came out of the discussions this evening as well is that there is a serious communication gap at this institution. Secondly, there is a serious problem with relationship; there is no good management or principal/staff relationship that would foster good working environment and in good industrial relations."

Pastor Lloyd Standford
"We were able to outline a number of points and as I speak right now we have on schedule to meet with board members. If that meeting does not happen today at 1pm tomorrow we will meet as a board and go over all the points that we look at today and try to bring some closure to what is before us."

Our news team tried extensively to speak to the principal herself, to give her an opportunity to answer to some of the accusations made by the faculty.

At every instance, she avoided our camera as much as possible, and, at one point, she even ran away from us!

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