As the new academic term approaches for Marabella North Secondary School, the campus’s Parent Teacher Association (PTA) has issued an urgent public appeal, highlighting the institution’s severely dilapidated infrastructure that endangers student safety and undermines effective learning. With the school set to welcome more than 600 students and 70 staff members when classes resume on Monday, PTA leaders are calling on Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Education to step in with immediate funding and repairs, after years of unaddressed complaints.
Marlon Jaikaran, the PTA’s vice president and a former student of the school, described touring the campus as a disheartening experience. “When children come to school to learn, they deserve a space that is safe, comfortable, and clean. Right now, that basic standard is not being met in these classrooms, which are entirely unfit for teaching ahead of the new term,” Jaikaran explained.
PTA members have cataloged a long list of critical defects across the entire campus. Rusted seating and broken stair railings are pervasive, while many classrooms lack complete sets of chairs, tables, and window fixtures. Missing windows and openings have allowed feral cats to enter and leave waste in learning spaces, and the campus also struggles with a large-scale pigeon infestation. The roof, external stairways, and indoor ceiling panels are all in advanced disrepair, with widespread rot evident in overhead structures. Multiple student restrooms are non-functional, and the school lacks fully operational fire safety equipment: no working fire extinguishers or pressurized water hoses are on hand to respond to emergencies. Overgrown, untrimmed grass across the grounds also adds to the unkempt conditions.
The poor state of the campus has already disrupted extracurricular opportunities for students: the school was forced to withdraw from the national secondary school football competition this year because the overgrown, unmaintained playing field cannot be used for training. The school’s main academic block, a three-story building that serves most of the student body, holds more than 20 classrooms, with separate Sixth Form accommodations for upper and lower-year students in a second, equally neglected building.
Jaikaran emphasized that the PTA has no plans to cancel the start of the term, but stressed that urgent assistance is needed ahead of September 7, the official opening date. To address the most pressing issues, PTA volunteers including Jaikaran, PTA president Tracey Turner-Alleyne, and trustee Lianne Ayres have been working around the clock since last week to repaint high-traffic areas of the campus, with half of the planned volunteer work completed to date. “We are doing everything we can to get the school ready for students, but there are major challenges we cannot solve on our own,” Jaikaran said.
The crisis at Marabella North Secondary is not a new development: PTA leaders and the school’s principal have submitted repeated requests for support to the Ministry of Education over multiple years, and have rarely received formal responses. Additional requests were submitted earlier this year, both during and at the conclusion of the previous academic term. While minor repair work was recently completed on the school’s science block, Jaikaran noted that this small intervention does nothing to resolve the campus’s widespread infrastructure problems. Although the ministry has cited limited funding as a barrier to large-scale repairs, Jaikaran said immediate action remains non-negotiable.
“We are asking the government and the ministry to extend a helping hand. The PTA cannot fix this alone,” he explained. “We have organized fundraisers, we have asked parents for personal donations, we have done everything we can to keep Marabella North operating at an acceptable standard. We cannot do more.”
To date, the PTA has contributed $2,500 of its own funds to repair work, in addition to securing donated paint from corporate sponsor Sherwin-Williams. Turner-Alleyne acknowledged that it is unfair for parent volunteers to cover the cost of critical infrastructure repairs that should be the responsibility of the education ministry, but said the group has no other choice when students’ learning environments are at stake.
“What else can we do? We need to make sure our children have a clean, supportive space to learn, and we will go to any length to make that happen,” Turner-Alleyne said. “If that means we have to dip into our own pockets, that is what we will do — that is what we have been doing all along.”
Turner-Alleyne added that while the school principal has coordinated with ministry officials who have visited the campus, dozens of critical issues remain unaddressed. She issued a direct personal appeal to Education Minister Dr. Michael Dowlath to visit the campus in person to see the conditions firsthand. “Please come walk through Marabella North, come see the state of our school, come look at our classrooms. We have entire classrooms with no tables or chairs at all,” she said. “Our school motto is ‘Our Best Always,’ and our children deserve our best, always. They deserve to learn in a safe, functional facility.”
Local media outlet The Reach reached out to Minister Dowlath for comment on the PTA’s appeal this week, but had not received a response as of press time.