Minutes of 5/5/12 NY Executive Committee meeting
Venue: Mateus Restaurant, Jamaica
Time: 900-1100pm
Attending: Kris Lachman, Radha and Howard Bernstein, Ameer Gulmohamad, Riaz Bacchus, Eno Chabinauth, Cecilia Vasconcellos
Items discussed:
- Riaz report from his April Guyana trip: Riaz had to cut his trip down by 7 days so his time was unfortunately more limited. His visit also coincided with Easter break so the school was not open and the HM was on vacation. Riaz still was able to speak to the HM by phone. Riaz met with the local Minister of Education Ms. Bhajjan to discuss the possibility of building a new school. The reason being that the LCSS building in our opinion is in very poor physical condition, lacks the needed space for the 750 students it now accommodates and has no playground whatsoever. The Minister was frank in informing that it was quite doubtful funding for a new school could be obtained from the government due to current political situation. Therefore Riaz suggested our plan “B” which was to refurbish the existing Belvedere Primary School back to a high school. That school presently is only serving about 100 students yet half of the building is in good condition and it has plenty of potential playground space. It is within walking distance to most LCSS students. Our offer is to provide USD20,000 from our association for this refurbishment and then relocate the LCSS students to that school. The Minister liked the idea and suggested we send a formal proposal by letter to the Ministry of Education in Georgetown which we will do shortly, followed up by copies to Ms. Bhajjan, Headmaster, Mr. Raghunandan (local representative of the Ministry of Education, Phulmanie De Nobrega and her brother Anil Beharry who is a local bank manager. With all of these extra people involved we feel our request to the Ministry will be further validated
- Installing fans in LCSS: Even though we prefer not to put major sums of money into the LCSS infrastructure should our proposal to relocate be accepted, as previously reported in the last Minutes, we have learned the school is very hot and therefore creates a difficult learning environment. Therefore we have decided to go ahead and install fans in the school. We have gotten an estimate of USD2500 from Derek Deonarine, an electrical contractor who comes well recommended by the school. We worked out the details of how we will proceed/fund and we will be putting the HM in touch with Derek. We had a gracious cheaper proposal by Lall Persuad to use free labor from students of his Guyasco Training School but considering the supplies would have to be purchased by us then, the difficulty of working on such an old building and warranties etc, we decided to go with that contractor who is very familiar with school buildings and can do the job in 3 days. Before and after photos will be posted on our website.
- HM wishlist: This document is posted on our website. Request 7 reads:
“To retool teachers for remedial teaching particularly for the 6th year programme.”
Since this is one wish that does not involve improving infrastructure of the LCSS building, we are interested to consider to fund this as it could essentially be taken with us to a new school building. Phul is going to reach out to the HM and get more details as to what this will cost and entail. Phul is coming to New York for 3 weeks soon and we will be meeting with her to go over current projects etc.
4. 2012 fund raiser: We will decide by the next meeting if we will go ahead and Kris and Eno will be looking for a new location for the party. Raffle tickets will be predominantly sold at the event. Each member will give a forecast soon of how many event tickets they can sell. We will also look into seeing if we can have a table at the Guyanese Summerfest which is 6/23/12 at Flushing Meadow Park where perhaps we can sell tickets.