Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says Gov­ern­ment is un­able to build a new school for the stu­dents of Mt Hope Sec­ondary. In the in­ter­im, how­ev­er, she says they will con­tin­ue to make re­pairs to the ex­ist­ing struc­ture so they can make it more com­fort­able for stu­dents and teach­ers.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue on I95FM yes­ter­day, in the wake of a protest over con­di­tions at the school by the PTA on Mon­day, the min­is­ter ad­mit­ted it was one of the schools card­ed for a new build­ing.

“We have done a lot of work on that school and it will con­tin­ue to need work be­cause it’s an old school. Now, the new school that has to be com­plet­ed, the cost for the new school is over $200 mil­lion. The build­ing went up, it was van­dalised, and so the cost to bring that school to com­ple­tion at this point, based on the lat­est es­ti­mate we got, which is this year, is over $200 mil­lion,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

“Cur­rent­ly, the Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed that we are not go­ing to in­vest that $200 mil­lion there right now. So, we must deal with the school that the stu­dents are present­ly in, and we must keep fix­ing. I can tell you that as re­cent­ly as ear­ly this year or late last year, we had to fix the rail­ings in that school. There was an is­sue with the rail­ings and en­sur­ing that they were in prop­er shape for the stu­dents. So, it’s not that the school has not been get­ting work.

“The school con­tin­u­ous­ly gets work, but it needs right now some em­pha­sis on elec­tri­cals and so on, and that is a part of what is sched­uled for the school.”

She said this project is with the MTS, which will sign a con­trac­tor soon.