The chairman of the Bermuda Parent Teachers Students Association has said the Bermuda Government’s schools consolidation plan should have begun last year and that, as it stands, there is not enough time for the plan to be properly implemented.

Additionally, Harry Matthie said the BPTSA, a representative body of all PTAs in the Bermuda public school system, had been given only a few days to mull over complex data to be discussed at an upcoming meeting with Wayne Scott, the Minister for Education, to consult over the plans.

The consultation meeting called by the Government is due to take place today at CedarBridge Academy.

In a statement, the Government said that no decision had been made as to whether any preschools or primary schools would be closed. However, the Ministry of Education was directed in January to reduce its budget by $1 million through school closure. The ministry itself is subject to $5.9 million in savings.

Mr Matthie told The Royal Gazette: “This school consolidation plan should have been done last year given the size of our debt and it should have been figured out by now. There isn’t enough time for them to vet the data and talk to the relevant stakeholders.

“There are contractual deadlines that are looming and need to be addressed. You can’t renew people’s contracts and then, come September, a teacher is told they don’t have a job because they didn’t sort it out soon enough.”

Speaking on the meeting with the Government today, Mr Matthie added: “If I had time to actually vet this consultation paper and go back to them with the changes I want to see, and data that I want included, then it would be a more productive meeting.

“We were given this data a couple of days ago and they want us to comment on it on Thursday.”

Mr Matthie said the short notice for the meeting could be problematic for parents who have day jobs but, more than that, it is the shortage of time with the government-produced data that has him worked up.

“If we had the right data in a format that we can actually sort out, and do our pivot tables, etc, it could be two to three weeks of crunching and coming up with scenarios and talking to the principals about how it would work. I am looking at the data they have given us and I have so many questions about the data itself.”

Mr Matthie said that he had hoped that school principals would have been more closely involved in any plans drawn up by the Government.

“The principals need to be involved; they are the ones who are in the system day in and day out.

“You don’t want to have too few children in a class, as you lose that dynamic, and you can’t have too many.

“The principals will be able to say how many students a school could absorb. It’s OK to take 20 students but you might disrupt the dynamics that are in that school.”

Mr Matthie said other concerns raised within the BPTSA were geographical distances between merged schools and student-teacher ratios.

He also said the parents of some public school students were considering moving their children into private education owing to uncertainties concerning closures in government schools.

“The only question that needs to be asked at this time is: are the assumptions that we made last year still valid today?”

Peter Harding, the chairman of the Bermuda Independent Schools Association, said that while the organisation had expected an influx, there had been no increase in applications so far.

Mr Matthie said he hoped the consolidation plan would not result in a decline in educational standards.

“The worst-case scenario is that the dynamics of schools that are performing well will change completely and they will turn into non-performing schools or not performing as well.”

The meeting, starting at 6.30pm, is designed to give PTAs additional information and an opportunity to provide feedback on the planned reorganisation.