St. Peters:--- At least 80% of the students attending the St. Maarten Academy (Academic and PSVE section) may face lock out as early as Monday confirmed Chairman of the St. Maarten Academy Alstain Van Dyke Bell in an interview with SMN News on Thursday.Bell said that the Academy School board is forced to take drastic actions against the parents who are delinquent in paying their children's school fees. The newly elected chairman said the lack of payments has placed the school in a precarious financial position which has forced them to take action. Bell said the parental contributions (school fees) are meant to supplement the subsidy given to the school by government. He said every year they are faced with excessive amounts of repairs and the school has to be painted every year mainly because the students cause damages to the property. Bell said it is difficult to pinpoint the students who are constantly vandalizing the school and as such they are not able to go after the parents of the students who would damage the school property. Therefore, they have to use the school fees to conduct the repairs and to reinforce the laboratories with more equipment. Most of the students who are behind in payments come from the Academic section Bell said. Parents are asked to make the school fee payment to St. Maarten Academy account at the Bank of Nova Scotia. Bell said due to the increase in robberies and other crimes the school has decided to give parents the opportunity to make the payment through the bank. He said with today's technology parents do not need to leave their homes or offices to get the monies to pay the fees. The fees he said can be made online via online banking.
When asked if the actions that will be taken by the St. Maarten Academy School Board will not compromise compulsory education that is currently being implemented on St. Maarten. Bell said that the management of the St. Maarten Academy is currently trying to pinpoint all of the students who are behind in their payments for the past two to three years. Bell made clear that the St. Maarten Academy simply cannot continue if the payments are not being made. "There is a large sum of money that is outstanding and the monies can be used to upgrade the computer and science labs while there is need for more monies to purchase books. So we need the monies urgently to execute the projects that are pending."
A meeting he said will be called with the parents shortly to inform them of the decisions that were taken by the newly elected board. The school will also be sending out letters to the parents to inform them of the decision that was taken by the board for the delinquent parents.