The resumption of classes delayed at three schools

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Three schools will not be opening their doors on Monday, but Minister of Education Kay McConney assured Sunday that the pupils of those schools will not be disadvantaged.

She gave the commitment after leading officials from her ministry including Chief Education Officer Dr. Ramona Archer on a tour of Wilkie Cumberbatch Primary School, The Pine, St. Michael this evening.

The resumption of classes at Wilkie Cumberbatch and the Eden Lodge Nursery School will be delayed by a week, while the Gordon Walters Primary School will open later this week. week.

The education minister said that the 35 children from the Eden Lodge Nursery school will be accommodated at the nearby Seventh Day Adventist Church.

She however explained that at Gordon Walters, which has been freshly painted, the delay is to ensure the smell dissipates and allow for other final touches to be added before the children return.

At Wilkie Cumberbatch, which underwent a complete overhaul, the delay is a result of ongoing work on windows at the facility.

 

“Sometimes when we start a job, we discover that there is more damage than we anticipated, that was the case with the windows. When we started to replace, we realised that the entire structural system of this block had to be redone both the roof and the flooring had to be redone; again, those were unexpected setbacks at the time. We thought we could do smaller repairs, however, we recognised we had to do an entire overhaul and I think that that augurs well for the kind of facility that the children, staff and workers of Wilkie Cumberbatch will come into,” she assured.

Under phase one of the renovations, Wilkie Cumberbatch has now been upgraded to a Category One hurricane shelter. In phase two, an adjoining one-story building will be rehabilitated into a two-story unit and is expected to be completed within the next financial year, pending Cabinet’s approval.

It will house additional administrative spaces and classrooms that will allow the school roll to increase to 600 from the current 535. According to McConney, this move is in line with research conducted by her Ministry that anticipates an increase in the number of primary school-age children in that area.

“So, for the most part, let us think not of the three that are not ready, let’s think of the 23 that are,” McConney stressed. (KC)