School promises safety review after protest

CHENNAI: The issue of an unsafe block on the Vidyodaya Matriculation Higher Secondary School for Girls campus in T Nagar where nearly 100 agitated parents staged a protest on Wednesday continues to be in the limelight. The school principal had submitted her resignation on Tuesday saying the building was unsafe and that she had been kept in the dark about repairs to it.
On Thursday, several parents met school chairman Narayanan who reportedly promised to make interim arrangements over the issues. He said that despite a report of the superintending engineer of the public works department declaring the building safe, the management was ready for “an independent group of engineers who would examine the structural competence of the building.” Classes would not be held in the damaged building pending approval, he added.
The letter by principal Annie Mohan to the chairman, a copy of which is with TOI, alleged irregularities and “personal harassment” by correspondent Anna George, an executive member of the managing committee. The letter said, “my reasons for deciding to leave are centered on a lack of transparency and involvement in various dealings of the correspondent in which I should have been fully informed.” It adds that “the structural stability of the building is a subject of grave concern and I have been kept in the dark about the repairs done to it.”
The protesting parents had also called for the reinstatement of the principal. “When it came to implementing Samacheer Kalvi, she did a pioneering job and it was due to her efforts that the school achieved 100%results in the board examinations in 2011,” said Sujata Kesh, whose two daughters studying in the school.
On Annie Mohan’s resignation, the chairman said “perhaps she was stressed out.” “Though it has been accepted by me, it has to be ratified by the members of governing body. It is an administrative matter and will be handled at that level,” he said. Earlier, parents said that the VGA Block which has seven classes started developing cracks in 2012. The school, with more than 1300 students, was founded on the lines of Shanti Niketan in 1924 at Pallavaram. It moved to its present campus in 1931 and boasts of an 89-year-old PTA.