Source: Radio New Zealand
Prefabs onsite of Wellington Girl’s College. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
A Wellington school is looking to put behind it years of disruption centred round its old and earthquake-prone buildings.
The problems at Wellington Girls College culminated last year with students setting up a classroom on Parliament grounds in protest, where one sign asked the Education Ministry if it could “pass this listening comprehension test”.
Crown Infrastructure Delivery has just put out a tender for two new buildings.
Principal Julia Davidson said the new builds, combined with strengthening an existing block, were significant.
“The great news is that we’ve got a plan, we’ve had our input into the plan and they’ve accepted our input,” she said on Monday.
“By 2028-ish, probably some time in the first half of the year, we’ll have everything built, up to new code, everybody’ll be in their permanent homes and we’ll be getting the field back so it’s really good news for the school.”
Of the 40 prefabs that occupy the field, the schools aims to keep of the 20 best of them, including science labs, though they would be moved off the field.
Disruption for students would be “a lot less” than before, Davidson said.
“The areas where building’s going to happen is fairly discrete and can be sort of sectioned off quite easily from the rest of the school, so for most of the time it shouldn’t be a major problem at all.
“The tetris of moving prefabs is going to be interesting but they’re aiming for holiday breaks for that, so fingers crossed it’ll all go to plan.”
The new tender is for design services for a new hall and performing arts centre, and an admin-classroom block. Also, the top two floors of the existing Brook block are being quake strengthened.
Keeping rather than bowling Brook entirely triggered last year’s protests. Davidson voiced a lot of upset at the ministry last year, but said on Monday the plan settled on for an upgrade was “going to be fine”.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
