STETHS in line for $310m upgrade and rebuild

The Government has earmarked $310 million to rebuild and strengthen St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) in Santa Cruz.

Dana Morris Dixon, minister of education, skills, youth and information, announced the investment while addressing the school’s graduation ceremony on June 25, held under the theme ‘Through Challenges We Rise: Embracing Resilience and Achieving Success’.

She said the allocation forms part of a broader multibillion-dollar national effort to restore more than 400 schools damaged when category five Hurricane Melissa swept across the island last October.

“We have 400 schools that have been damaged across Jamaica and all of them we are trying to build back at the same time. You know, that's a very difficult feat. It's very hard,” Morris Dixon said.

At STETHS, the works include redesigning the male and female dormitories with reinforced concrete roof slabs and additional supporting columns to improve structural integrity and better withstand future storms. 

The damaged teachers’ cottage and the principal’s residence are also to be upgraded, and the grade-11 block will receive reinforced purlins beneath new 24-gauge industrial roof sheeting.

What is more, strengthening works will be carried out across the campus to improve resilience to high winds, heavy rainfall, and other extreme weather.

The school is also set to become home to Jamaica’s first high-school mechatronics and robotics laboratory when students return in September. The facility forms part of a $400-million investment by the ministry, funded through the HEART/NSTA Trust, to bolster technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in technical high schools across the island.

“We believe that our students at STETHS, or any of the other technical high schools in Jamaica, must have the best technology at their fingertips,” Morris Dixon said.

Addressing graduating students, she urged them to mirror the resilience being built into their school’s infrastructure. While acknowledging that life brings setbacks and disappointment, she encouraged them to persevere and to see closed doors not as failures but as redirection.