‘Prevent discontinuance of education,’ ‘Admit all eligible students,’ and other such messages on the wall of the Corporation Primary School in Chinna Ellai Sandhu in Ward 25 mean very little. For, there is no student to read the messages and spread across the information.
It has been nearly six years since the students read the messages. The last they could have read the message would be on June 5, 2006, the date written on the black board of Class IV. The board also has one of the longest English words written on it.
The board opposite is that of Class V. Both the boards have the number of students on roll and number of students present. On June 5, 2006, Class IV had 13 students on roll. Of those 12 were present. Class V had 13 students on roll and 12 were present.
The poor student strength was what led the Coimbatore Corporation to shutdown the school sometime in 2006. “The strength used to be so poor, that the neighbours complemented the students during Independence Day and Republic Day functions,” recalls B. Amsaveni, a resident.
After being under lock and key for the last six years, things have turned for the worse in the school: the gates have fallen in love with the hinges that they do not want to move an inch, roots have spread through cracks on the wall to embrace the black board in a classroom, tipplers have a whale of time to drink in peace and gamblers have a good place to polish their card playing skills. Right behind the school is a vacant plot, measuring about 15 cents. Sandwiched between two houses, the land has also been disuse for long, as the humus suggests. The residents say they want the Corporation to reopen the school and develop the vacant plot into a park. Their demand echoed at the Coimbatore Corporation on Monday where Ward 25 Councillor K. Jeyabal asked the officials to convert the school in to a library and the vacant plot a park.
It will benefit the residents of the area as they have neither a park nor a library. Not just that, a Corporation asset in the form of school could be put to the best possible use, he reasons. He says he has represented the issue to the Mayor and Commissioner, who have promised to do the needful.
Corporation sources say they are seized of the issue and the school campus will spring back to life.
