Thomas Saunders Secondary School students should be prepared for an extended stay at Arnos Vale, since the government may opt to build a new school instead of repairing the existing structure in Richmond Hill.
At the beginning of the school year, the pupils were relocated to Arnos Vale, where the Grammar School students were temporarily residing while their school was being restored.
MP Camilo Gonsalves provided an update on the future of the institution’s physical structure on Wednesday.
“We were supposed to immediately begin repairs to Thomas Sanders. However, we’re now having a discussion about whether or not it makes sense to continue with the repairs as we had planned or whether we should demolish and construct a new building”.
“Now, there’s a significant difference in money between repairing a school and building a new school, but the engineers visited the area on Tuesday and saw some of those columns from Richmond Hill school days starting to show some structural strain. So, we’re having that conversation now and we don’t have a decision yet”.
“I have to be advised by the engineers, but there’s a possibility that instead of the young men and women of Thomas Saunders being out there for nine months, which was the original plan, they may have to be there for up to two years, for two full school years. Because if we decide that we have to build over the school from scratch, it’s going to have obviously different implications than if you just fix your roof, fix the floor, fix the windows, fix the bathrooms”.
Gonsalves stated, they can expect a decision when the prime minister returns from Montserrat, but their primary worry is the safety and comfort of the kids and instructors.
“We want to make sure that our students are safe and comfortable, and that won’t be a political decision; that will be an engineering decision. If the engineers said, “you could repair the school, but ten years from now, you’re going to have to go back in there again, then it might make sense to say, well, Richmond Hill school served its purpose and Thomas Saunders served its purpose in its first iteration”.
Gonsalves remarked that the current school’s location is on a little plot of land, but there is still much that can be done when starting from scratch.
