The Bala Mandir Kamaraj Trust, which manages the Satyamurthi High School here, has denied an allegation that it was trying to convert the school into a self-financing college and termed such charges “baseless, unfounded and far from truth and actual facts.”
Responding to a news item published in these columns on June 27, Maya Gaitonde, Honorary General Secretary of the Bala Mandir Kamaraj Trust on Sunday rebutted the claims made by the Federation of Tamil Nadu Teachers Association in the news report.
Gaitonde said the trust and its units had been serving the cause of children, especially orphans, destitute and those from the economically deprived strata for the past 63 years. Started by former Chief Minister K Kamaraj, and Manju Bashini, in 1949, the institution has expanded its welfare activities and had been providing care and protection, education, medical service, vocational training and rehabilitation of children. The Trust has been run under the stewardship and guidance of persons of eminence and integrity in puclic life.
Pointing out that the Satyamurthi High School had been in existence for over 50 years and that the higher secondary section for the past 20 years, she said that for the last few years, the Class X students, on completion of study, had been leaving the school to join Class XII English-medium courses in other schools. “We do not want to start self financing groups and strain the resources of the poor section of the society,” she asserted.
Keeping the above trend in view, the Trust and school management decided to close down the Higher Secondary Section, which has only one Tamil group, in 2011-2012 and started various alternatives beyond Class X. The letter of closure was given to the Department of Education on April 4, 2011 and in the academic year 2011-2012, no students joined Class XI in the school, Maya noted.
“The Bala Mandir Kamaraj Trust remains committed to the cause of education of the down trodden in providing many qualitative services along with school education and health. The Satyamurthi High School will continue to function as earlier,” the trust official said.