Former Education Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly says police officers have a legitimate role in schools but cannot be expected to replace trained Student Support Services personnel.<\/p>\n
Speaking during the Opposition’s September 10 press conference, Gadsby-Dolly said the presence of police in schools is not new and has formed part of previous efforts to address school violence.<\/p>\n
However, she said the concern is the role now being assigned to officers while Student Support Services are being depleted.<\/p>\n
Gadsby-Dolly said Trinidad and Tobago has more than 400 schools but only 51 police officers operating in schools under the arrangement she referenced.<\/p>\n
“We have 400 and something schools. We have 51 police in schools. That can’t work,” she said.<\/p>\n
She argued that police officers are not trained to replace guidance counsellors, social workers and other professionals responsible for behavioural and psychosocial intervention.<\/p>\n
Gadsby-Dolly said police can assist schools and provide valuable links to communities and police youth clubs, but maintained that their role should complement rather than replace Student Support Services.<\/p>\n
She described expecting police to function as a substitute for those services as a flawed approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gadsby-Dolly Says 51 Police Across More Than 400 Schools Simply Cannot Replace Student Support Services<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-trinidad-and-tobago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tringlobe.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}