Schools

Dublin’s Catholic archdiocese asked the city council to rezone 33 church sites and several schools so homes could be built on them in future, arguing many sit in disadvantaged areas where housing need should take priority.

Bermuda’s 2021 plans to close primary schools put a spotlight on their church roots: St George’s Preparatory began in a Methodist Sunday school in 1876, and St David’s Primary in a building owned by St Luke’s AME Church in 1893.

Solas Early Childhood Institution in Westmoreland has operated inside a church building for 15 years on land whose title a donor’s grandmother helped secure, and received donations in 2020 to support online classes.

Cedar Grove Academy, built for $600 million on New Testament Church of God land in Portmore, opened unfinished in 2013 with classes in the church hall. Five years on, its first CSEC cohort recorded 100 per cent passes in nine subjects.

An ecumenical partnership run through Church World Service repaired or built 110 houses in Haiti after Hurricane Matthew, at US$4,000 to US$5,000 per new home, with United Church of Christ disaster funds also helping schools and health work.

A Kent school ended ties with a Christian teaching charity after parents complaint of extremist ideology. The charity denies it; the underlying tension over what a faith school owes non-religious families remains unresolved.

A Kent school ended ties with a Christian teaching charity after parents complaint of extremist ideology. The charity denies it; the underlying tension over what a faith school owes non-religious families remains unresolved.

The Jamaica Social Investment Fund opened a new $45.3 million building for St Paul’s United Church Early Childhood Institution in Kingston in 2017, funded under the EU’s Poverty Reduction Programme.

Residents of Bowden Hill, St Andrew, who helped save their primary school from closure, petitioned against the Anglican Church naming a new board chairman, saying the church had neglected the school for about a decade.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia broke ground on St. John Neumann Place II, 52 affordable apartments for independent seniors on a former Catholic high school campus, backed by a $12 million tax credit allocation.

When Education Minister Ruel Reid threatened to take over schools breaching funding policy, Catholic deacon and columnist Peter Espeut argued in the Gleaner that church and trust schools do not belong to the Government and urged owners to review their partnership terms.

St Matthew’s Anglican Church in Boscobel, St Mary, marked 115 years in 2015. It has a basic school attached and a growing primary school, runs a soup kitchen, and shares one rector with four other churches.

When about 20 rural schools, many church-run, were set to close in 2015, columnist Basil Fletcher urged churches to turn the empty buildings into agro-processing and export businesses to create jobs for rural youth and women.

From 2015 Food For The Poor planned to give two fruit trees, from ackee and breadfruit to soursop, with every house or school it donated, starting with a pilot in Spring Pass, St Thomas.

At the start of its 50th anniversary, Anglican-founded Church Teachers’ College in Mandeville, grown from 75 to over 600 students, set university status as its goal and planned a $150-million science centre with church support.