Hurricane-Displaced Western Jamaica Students Praised at Immaculate Conception Graduation

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, Dr. Kasan Troupe, has singled out two young women from storm-hit western Jamaica who pressed on with their schooling at Immaculate Conception High School in Kingston after their home institutions were left damaged.

Shevanese Lopez and Khaydene Campbell received special mention during Immaculate’s 2026 graduation ceremony at the school on Sunday, July 5.

Dr. Troupe praised the students and their parents for choosing one of Jamaica’s leading secondary schools when disruption from the hurricane threatened their academic progress. She also thanked the principal and board at Immaculate for opening their doors to the newcomers.

“This is the kind of support we get from our principals,” she said.

Shevanese, who had been a student at St. Hilda’s Diocesan High School in St. Ann, told JIS News that St. Hilda’s took time to reopen after Hurricane Melissa. Her parents then enrolled her at Immaculate so her Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) preparation would not stall.

Though nervous at the outset, she said staff and students quickly made her feel at home, and she came to cherish Immaculate as deeply as her previous school. The tall netballer, formerly on the Principal’s Honour Roll at St. Hilda’s, already sat three CSEC subjects in grade 10 — English Language, grade two; Mathematics, grade two; and Information Technology, grade one.

She is still awaiting results for Spanish, Additional Mathematics, Literature, Chemistry, Biology, Physics and English Language, which she resat “to get a grade one”. Shevanese intends to remain in the sciences and eventually earn a degree in forensic science.

Khaydene’s mother, Nadine Bartley Campbell, told JIS News that when her daughter, formerly of Manning’s School in Westmoreland, missed six weeks of classes, she and her husband decided they could not wait any longer.

“She’s a science student and the labs were destroyed [which would make her exam preparations difficult],” she explained.

Once Khaydene secured a place at Immaculate, the family arranged for her to live with an uncle in Kingston. Mrs. Bartley Campbell said she is proud of how her daughter approached her exams, including shutting down every social media account to concentrate on schoolwork.

“She started at a prestigious school, and she’s still at a prestigious school. I feel very proud of her. She has worked hard. She’s resilience personified. She did her labs; she did her SBAs (Student-based Assessments). She had to redo some things but we are proud that she stood steadfast,” Mrs. Bartley Campbell told JIS News.