With­in two weeks, 166 dis­placed stu­dents of the Clax­ton Bay Ju­nior An­gli­can school will get a new­ly re­fur­bished build­ing to at­tend class­es. The as­sur­ance came from Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Lovell Fran­cis.

Dur­ing a meet­ing with par­ents, teach­ers and mem­bers of the An­gli­can Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment on Fri­day, Fran­cis dis­cussed op­tions for the re­lo­ca­tion of the school.

One par­ent sug­gest­ed a shift sys­tem with the Clax­ton Bay An­gli­can Se­nior School but Fran­cis said based on shift sys­tems ex­ist­ing else­where this was not the best op­tion.

An­oth­er sug­gest­ed the Hard­bar­gain Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry school which had ad­e­quate space.

How­ev­er the dis­tance be­tween the ex­ist­ing school and Hard­bar­gain would be bur­den­some to the chil­dren, an­oth­er ar­gued.

Even­tu­al­ly, the old Mara­bel­la South Sec­ondary School was pro­posed and Fran­cis ac­com­pa­nied by his Min­is­te­r­i­al team and mem­bers of the Board went to vis­it the fa­cil­i­ty.

Fran­cis said al­though the old school struc­ture had been trans­formed in­to a mu­nic­i­pal po­lice bar­racks, there was still a build­ing big enough to ac­com­mo­date all 166 pupils and teach­ers.

He said scop­ing works will be­gin this week­end and by Mon­day the build­ing will be retro­fit­ted to ac­com­mo­date the class­es.

“So far, this seems to be the best op­tion,” Fran­cis said.

He re­it­er­at­ed that the ex­ist­ing Clax­ton Bay Ju­nior An­gli­can school was not struc­tural­ly sound so it was not pos­si­ble to con­tin­ue class­es in that build­ing.

He not­ed that the school is on a pri­or­i­ty list­ing for re­fur­bish­ment dur­ing the Christ­mas hol­i­days.

Mean­while, Fran­cis said both the Princes Town Pres­by­ter­ian Num­ber One and the Ra­mai Trace Hin­du School will al­so be com­plet­ed.

He not­ed that the prob­lems at the Cal­i­for­nia Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry school will be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and pro­vi­sions will be made to rec­ti­fy the prob­lems with the faulty wa­ter pump.

The cen­tu­ry-old school was or­dered closed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect on Sep­tem­ber 30 and a rec­om­men­da­tion was made by the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty in­spec­tion of­fi­cers for it to be de­mol­ished.

Since then, stu­dents have been forced to stay at home.