Every morning before sunrise, plantation workers at the Liberian Agricultural Company (LAC) in Wee District, Grand Bassa County begin another day of tapping rubber trees--labor that has sustained one of Liberia's oldest agricultural concessions for nearly seven decades.
Like parents everywhere, they leave home with a dream that their children will have a better future than they did.
That dream begins in school.
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But for thousands of children across LAC's eleven-school education system, the journey toward that future now begins in classrooms with leaking roofs, broken desks, shattered windows, collapsing ceilings and deteriorating toilets that many parents say no child should have to use.
For many of these students, the school bell no longer signals hope alone. It also signals another day of learning in conditions that education advocates say undermine both learning and dignity.
The Daily Observer has found that the deterioration of the LAC School System has reached alarming proportions, prompting renewed calls for intervention by both the Liberian Agricultural Company and the Ministry of Education.
The LAC School System was built on hope, but is now marked by neglect.Itserves thousands of children living throughout the company's extensive plantation communities in Grand Bassa County. Administered through the company's Human Resources Department, the school network has historically represented one of the concession's most significant social investments.
For decades, plantation education served as an unwritten contract between employers and workers. Families accepted difficult working conditions with the understanding that while parents harvested rubber, their children would harvest opportunity through education. Former students still remember when LAC schools ranked among the most respected concession schools in Liberia.
Teachers maintained high academic standards. Students performed competitively in national examinations. Parents proudly pointed to education as the greatest benefit available to plantation families.
Today, many residents say that reputation has steadily faded.
"What hurts us most is not that the buildings are old," one retired worker explained. "It is that we have watched them deteriorate year after year without anyone fixing even the simplest problems."
Classrooms That Teach More Than Lessons
Walking through several campuses, the signs of neglect become difficult to ignore. Walls are cracked. Ceilings sag. Spider webs hang from broken roofing panels. Windows remain shattered. Doors barely close.
Desks wobble beneath students trying to concentrate on mathematics, English and science. In many classrooms, dozens of children occupy spaces originally designed for far fewer learners.
Without electricity in several satellite schools, students spend long hours enduring extreme heat with little ventilation. Teachers say the physical environment has become an educational obstacle in itself.
"When students are sweating, distracted by heat, rain coming through broken windows or worrying about where they will sit, learning becomes much harder," one teacher observed.
Educational research consistently shows that the quality of learning environments influences attendance, concentration, teacher morale and ultimately academic performance. Infrastructure, some argue, is not merely about buildings. It is part of the learning process itself.
Behind every cracked classroom wall is a family making enormous sacrifices. Rubber tapping remains among Liberia's most physically demanding occupations. Workers often begin before dawn and endure long hours in difficult weather conditions.
Yet despite modest incomes, many continue investing in their children's education because they see it as the only realistic pathway out of poverty. One plantation worker, who asked not to be named before he gets sacked, summed up that hope with quiet emotion.
"We may not earn enough, but we keep working because we don't want our children to become rubber tappers like us. Education is the only hope we have for them."
That statement reflects a reality shared across Liberia's plantation communities. Parents are not asking for luxury. They are asking for classrooms where rain does not interrupt lessons, desks that allow children to write comfortably, and schools that inspire rather than discourage learning.
Perhaps nowhere is the deterioration more troubling than in the schools' sanitation facilities. Across multiple campuses, bathroom facilities have reportedly fallen into severe disrepair.
Many remain pit latrines. Some lack functioning doors. Others are described by parents as unhygienic and virtually unusable. The consequences extend beyond inconvenience. Parents report that some female students avoid using the school bathrooms altogether, instead leaving campus to seek privacy in nearby rubber bushes.
Education specialists say such conditions present more than hygiene concerns. They also raise issues of student safety, dignity and gender equity.
For adolescent girls especially, access to safe sanitation facilities plays an important role in school attendance and retention. Without adequate facilities, many girls face unnecessary barriers to completing their education.
Workers and residents say the decline of the LAC School System reflects a broader question confronting concession communities across Liberia.
What responsibilities should companies bear toward the communities that sustain their operations?
The LAC has operated in Liberia since 1959, producing natural rubber for international markets. Over generations, thousands of Liberians have worked on the plantation, contributing to an industry that remains an important part of the national economy.
Residents argue that education should remain among the company's highest social priorities. Community leaders acknowledge that maintaining eleven schools requires significant financial resources.
Yet they also note that many of the visible problems--repairing ceilings, replacing broken windows, fixing classroom doors, rehabilitating toilets and restoring electricity--represent relatively basic maintenance rather than large-scale reconstruction.
"The children are not asking for expensive buildings," one community elder said. "They are asking for schools that show somebody cares about them."
Stakeholders warn that deferred maintenance rarely remains inexpensive.
Small repairs eventually become major reconstruction projects. Broken windows lead to water damage. Damaged roofs weaken entire buildings. Poor sanitation increases health risks.
Overcrowded classrooms affect both teaching quality and student outcomes.
Ultimately, the cost of neglect grows larger than the cost of prevention.
There is also an economic dimension.
The country's future workforce depends heavily upon today's students. Weak educational environments ultimately produce weaker human capital, reducing future productivity and limiting economic opportunities for entire communities.
The LAC management has not responded to inquiries made by the Daily Observe through text messages after numerous calls went unanswered over the weekend, but the Human Resource Department, which this writer tried to seek a reaction from but couldn't up to press time, reportedly told local media practitioners that the commencement of renovation works on the schools will start very soon.
"We are seeing the concerns in the public and will start work on the schools soon," a top HR official is quoted as telling a local reporter.
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However, the growing concern has renewed calls for stronger oversight by the Ministry of Education.
Parents and community advocates are urging government inspectors to conduct a comprehensive assessment of all eleven LAC schools, document infrastructural deficiencies and work with the company to establish a clear rehabilitation timetable.
Education remains both a constitutional aspiration and a national development priority. Regardless of whether schools are public, private or concession-operated, advocates argue that every Liberian child deserves safe classrooms, functional sanitation, adequate furniture and an environment conducive to learning.
The deterioration of the LAC School System is ultimately about more than buildings. It is about opportunity.
For plantation workers, education has long represented the bridge between one generation's sacrifices and the next generation's possibilities. When that bridge begins to crumble, the consequences extend far beyond school compounds. They affect families, communities and the country's future workforce.
As another academic year approaches, thousands of LAC students will once again carry their books into classrooms that many parents say no longer reflect the value placed on education.
The challenge now confronting both the company and national education authorities is whether those classrooms will continue to symbolize neglect--or become the starting point for renewed investment in the children whose futures depend upon them.
For the parents who rise before dawn to harvest rubber each day, the appeal is simple. Their children deserve schools that nurture ambition rather than diminish it. Because for families who have invested their hopes in education, allowing those hopes to decay alongside crumbling classrooms may be the greatest cost of all.
