TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Interesting article on St. Martin schools

If you read French, you may be interested in this article:
"Après Irma, une rentrée scolaire encore difficile à Saint-Martin"
https://www.lexpress.fr/actualites/...re-difficile-a-saint-martin_2033433.html

Here's a rough translation of a portion of the article:

One year after Irma, the number of students has decreased and 1,329 fewer students are expected for the autumn compared to the forecasts for the start of the 2017 school year. Many families left the island after Irma, and schooled their children either in Guadeloupe or Martinique, or in France.

Six months after the hurricane, the official figures reported a loss of 20% of students in public institutions. One year later, the loss is close to 15%.

For Daniel Gibbs, president of the community of Saint-Martin, these figures "are not that bad," and despite the departures, new families have arrived, accompanying the professionals who came to rebuild the territory.

"Our goal was for students to be able to go back to school safely," says Gibbs, but "all the structures have suffered, and it is clear that some schools will not open in September," he told the AFP.

The government reports that the island's 20 schools were all badly damaged and three of them entirely destroyed: an elementary school in Marigot, a primary school and a college in Cul-de-Sac. € 9.5 million has been set aside in the community budget to pay for the necessary repairs and reconstruction in the 18 schools still standing.

The state paid 15 million euros to Saint-Martin to help pay for the 32 million euros of repair work. "We're trying to spend what we've been given," says Gibbs, whose community faces a lack of engineering, but "needs are huge."

Gritting one's teeth

The situation is particularly difficult in the Cité scolaire, where eight modular buildings were to be set up to accommodate the high school students and students of Weinum College, which merged with that of Soualiga, which was irretrievably destroyed.

The 2017-2018 school year was marked by a rotation and sharing system (Weinum in the mornings and Soualiga in the afternoons). For the upcoming school year, there is no question of rotation, the government promised.

But the prefabricated classrooms haven't been delivered -- they are are late, their steel foundations have been lost in the meanders of shipping. The school principals have therefore announced the development of modified schedules, including the extension of time slots, including establishing courses on Wednesdays.

[The article continues]

Sad to think that this might be due to families leaving SXM for good.

There are LOTS of people who left SXM after Irma, presumably for good, at this point, if they're not back by now.

I know several who have left for good or are in transition to leave.