“We Came Together”: A Community Revived a Church School. Now It Is Fighting the Anglican Church Over Who Runs It

• Bowden Hill residents opposed the Anglican Church’s choice of a new school board chairman
• The community said the church had neglected the school for about a decade
• Enrolment fell to 18 in 2015 but had recovered to 81
• A petition against the church’s nominee drew 154 signatures

In west rural St Andrew, a small primary school became the centre of a dispute between a community and the church with a legal right to help run it, the Jamaica Observer reported in April 2017. The Bowden Hill Community Benevolent Society objected to the Anglican Church nominating a new board chairman for Bowden Hill Primary and Infant School when the board’s term ended on March 31, 2017.

Society president Phillip Smith said the church had effectively left the school for about a decade. The last active church-nominated chairman had served in 2005, he said, and later nominees had not been active. By 2015, enrolment had dropped to 18 students and the school faced closure. “When the community was undergoing the agony of us losing our school, all the interest groups in the community came together,” Smith said.

That effort worked. The school had 81 students in 2017, out of a capacity of 110. Residents gathered 154 signatures on a petition against the church exercising its right to name the chairman, and Smith warned of demonstrations if a nominee were imposed without consultation. Dr Simone Buckham-Heaven was the outgoing chairman.

The Rt Rev Dr Howard Gregory, the Anglican Bishop of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, declined to comment until the Ministry of Education had responded. “The ministry has to respond to something like that before I can make a comment,” he said.

Many Jamaican schools were founded by churches, which in many cases still hold the right to nominate board chairmen. Bowden Hill shows how that relationship can fray when a church is absent and a community steps in. For churches, the lesson is that rights over a school come with a duty to stay involved. For diaspora associations and past students who raise money for rural schools, it is worth knowing who governs the school and who owns the site before investing in new buildings.

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