Opposition Spokesperson on Education, Damion Crawford, has raised serious concerns that the continued housing of adults in primary and secondary schools, more than six months after the 2025 hurricane season, represents a severe failure of post-disaster recovery planning and a breach of the State’s duty of care to its children.

The People’s Opposition notes with grave concern that while fewer than 100 individuals remain displaced, the learning environment and physical safety of over 4,000 students are being compromised daily. This is no longer an emergency response issue; it is a breakdown in the execution of basic post-disaster responsibilities.

The spectrum of risk: A preventable crisis

It must be acknowledged that safety is not merely the absence of a reported or verifiable incident, but the presence of effective protective systems. The continued cohabitation of students and unvetted adults creates three distinct tiers of avoidable risk:

1. Physical and Safeguarding Risk
The presence of unauthorised adults on school compounds undermines established access control systems. Schools are designed to restrict entry and monitor adult-student interactions; prolonged shelter arrangements have effectively neutralised these safeguards. 

This creates an unmanaged environment for:

• Exposure to inappropriate behaviour: Students are at risk of witnessing conduct, including lewd or unsavoury acts, that is entirely unsuitable for a learning environment.
• Exposure to conflict: High-stress living conditions in shelters can lead to verbal or physical disputes that students should never be forced to witness.
• Heightened vulnerability: The absence of standard vetting frameworks increases the potential for violence or abuse against minors in spaces where they should be most secure.

2. Health and Sanitation Risk
School facilities, particularly at the primary level, are not engineered for residential use. The shared use of bathrooms and common spaces between students and adult occupants (whether by necessity or unsupervised practice) creates an avoidable public health hazard and places an unsustainable strain on school sanitation systems.

3. Psychosocial and Learning Environment Risk
Schools must provide stability and psychological safety. Exposure to adult distress and the disruption of school routines creates an environment of toxic stress that is fundamentally inconsistent with academic concentration and student well-being.

The safety paradox

The Government’s current position is fundamentally contradictory. While the Jamaica Teaching Council Act 2025 mandates strengthened vetting and yearly police records for professional educators, the administration is simultaneously accommodating unvetted adults in the same corridors.

Further, the structure of our education system is deliberately designed to separate adults and children through controlled access, security fencing, and monitoring protocols. These safeguards exist precisely to reduce the above-stated risks. The housing of unvetted adults flies in the face of these established precautions.

“Risk does not require confirmed harm; it arises from reasonable exposure. The demand for evidence of the JTA President’s reports is therefore misplaced, as a school gate that cannot be locked is a failure of the State. We do not wait for a tragedy to occur before restoring the barriers that protect our children. Leadership is about prevention, not apologies after the fact. There is an inherent fallacy if a teacher requires a police record to enter a classroom, yet the Government permits unvetted strangers to sleep in one,” Crawford stated.

Immediate solutions required

Given the manageable number of individuals remaining (fewer than 100), the Opposition calls for the immediate implementation of the following transition measures:

1. Immediate rental support: Targeted, short-term housing grants to enable families to secure private accommodation.
2. Relocation to alternative facilities: Immediate transition of shelter operations to non-school locations such as community centres.
3. Temporary housing deployment: Utilisation of modular housing or managed temporary units, such as tents, in non-school areas.

The Government gave a public assurance that schools would be vacated by December 2025. That promise has been broken. We call on the Prime Minister and ODPEM to act within the next 72 hours to provide a definitive relocation schedule and to restore these institutions to their exclusive purpose: the education and protection of Jamaica’s children.