Maldon High School alumni donate masks, tablets to school
NEW YORK, NY:
Past students of a number of Jamaican high schools, scattered overseas, are coming to the aid of their alma mater as the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to disrupt the delivery of quality education in serious ways.
One such organisation that has rallied to the call from the Ministry of Education and allied stakeholders is the Maldon High School Alumni Association (MHSAA), USA Chapter, outfitting some 1000 students with a branded face covering (mask) as well as the first shipment of e-learning devices to the school in Summer Hill, St James.
MHSAA New York Chapter immediately went into action with a novel idea to provide masks for students and faculty, in the process launching the ‘No Child Left Unmasked’ initiative.
The alumni association reached out to a local Jamaican seamstress and print shop to design customised masks with the Maldon logo. In April 2020, the ‘No Child Left Unmasked’ goal was met with the delivery of 1,000 MHS-branded, reusable masks to Principal Janet Manning at the school, in time to help students safely finish the semester and return to take their final exams in June, while maintaining the COVID-19 protocol (masks and social distancing).
Reality of Distance Learning
With masks on, came the reality of distance learning via a virtual classroom, and, as MHSAA President Baldwin ‘Bunny’ McIntosh attested, “Maldon High School is one of the many schools that had to switch to remote learning, with little or no preparation, during the height of the pandemic”.
The president, himself a licensed IT specialist, steered the organisation to embark on a mission to deliver an online Learning Management System (LMS) platform that would meet the distance-learning needs of MHS.
President McIntosh engaged Microsoft and was successful in procuring a free, Office 365 faculty licence, a fully functional Online Learning Management System, which was engineered and ready for delivery to the institution by July 2020. Despite a few humps and bumps, students were enrolled and ready for e-learning at the start of the September semester.
Continuing with the initiative to make learning available to students, a ‘Donate to Educate’ laptop and tablet drive was launched in August 2020, to raise funds to purchase 250 tablets to distribute to students. These tablets were equipped with built-in SIM card slots that would address the need of students without Internet access or cellphones. The students/parents could purchase data service to use these tablets.
On October 26, 2020, the first 50 tablets were delivered to Maldon High School, with the promise of another 200 by the end of 2020. A handover ceremony was held on Thursday, November 12, which was attended by students, faculty, and members of the local alumni chapter.
The fundraising drive is set to continue on Saturday, December 12, with the staging of ‘Maldon Rewind 2020’, a virtual fete produced by the alumni association, starting at 7 p.m.