CedarBridge Academy, to take control of their children. She has taken a zero tolerance stance against student violence and says Government will be forced to take drastic measures. We appreciate the Premier's stand is probably what most Bermudians want. However the solutions are not simple or easy.

Before we take drastic measures we must give CedarBridge a chance to prove that it has the staffing and the facilities to redirect problem students. The new school and its staff have inherited these students from other schools and now have a difficult job to do. But, as we have said before, Bermuda created CedarBridge to stop students "falling through the cracks'' and not to throw them out and condemn them to the sidewalks and the walls.

We agree that students at CedarBridge who want to learn must have a learning environment but the concept of the school was to help and to save students with problems. If we had plans to remove problem students to a special school then we had no need of CedarBridge and should have improved the old schools and provided one unit for problem students.

The suggestion that we should now have another school which would provide an alternative environment where students will be taught how to behave in a learning environment and then returned to CedarBridge will inevitably brand those students.

We moved students, including the problem students, to CedarBridge from schools around the Island and now seem shocked that there are behavioural problems at CedarBridge. Surely no-one thought that simply building a new school would solve the problems.

It must have been clear to those who planned the school that if you put a large number of students in a school near Hamilton then they would hang out in Hamilton. Students of that age "hang out'' in every country. The Hamilton Bus Terminal had student problems long before anyone thought of CedarBridge. Did we seriously believe that the students would get the bus at school and go straight home? What disturbs us greatly is that older people were at the Bus Terminal provoking students to react to the Police and encouraging their bad public behaviour. It is not remiss to think that some of these incidents have been managed, not by the students but by older adults. There are people who want to make general trouble and it is reprehensible that they would use young people to do so. That is a problem greater than student bad behaviour.

We agree that many of the problems stem from the home, but Bermuda knew that long before anyone thought of CedarBridge. That is why we think parents should be sent for when students are disciplined.

It is important to remember that the staff at CedarBridge cannot work miracles. The school and the students must be given time and help to prove themselves. Parents who care will help.