The Nassau Guardian
Four reported violent incidents for school year
Calling the attack on a teacher at Anatol Rodgers High School on Wednesday afternoon an isolated incident, Director of Education Lionel Sands said yesterday that four incidents of violence have been recorded on school campuses on New Providence since the beginning of the school year.
A fifth incident occurred on Grand Bahama in September.
According to Sands, three of the incidents on New Providence were fights among students on campus, one of which resulted in a student being stabbed with a blunt object, but his injuries were not severe.
In Wednesday’s incident, an eighth grade student attacked a teacher in a classroom, according to education officials who said the teacher had to seek medical attention.
Sands said as the teacher attempted to discipline the student for misbehaving, the boy attacked her.
An education official, who did not wish to be named, said the 13-year-old boy choked the female teacher.
Sands said the student has been suspended and will be enrolled in Program SURE, which caters to students between 12 and 16 who display problematic behavior.
“The student will not return to the normal school setting until we are satisfied the intervention that we provide has had an impact and he is ready to go back to a normal school setting,” he said.
In October, a mother of a special needs student at Anatol Rodgers was arrested at the school for allegedly assaulting a teacher in a classroom.
The teacher reportedly suffered a shoulder injury. The mother was charged with assault.
The ministry determined that the student, a 17-year-old non-verbal autistic boy, would be best suited to another school.
Just two weeks before that incident, the mother of a student at Jack Hayward High School in Grand Bahama was sentenced to six months in prison for assaulting the school’s principal.
While the principal was not severely harmed, the incident prompted the ministry to request increased security presence, and better screening of visitors.
Although police were stationed at Anatol Rodgers on Wednesday, Sands said the officers could not have prevented the attack.
“We do not have police presence in every classroom and in every corridor and because of that, the police won’t necessarily be around if something were to happen in a classroom,” he said.
“Obviously, if the police are patrolling they can prevent things from happening in the yard.
“But when we are talking about in any school with a 1,000 or more students, and you have two to three officers you cannot prevent everything.”
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