The government won’t be building any new schools this year, but it is going to spend $3 million to repair those that are in need of refurbishments, according to Education Minister Jerome Gomez.

“The school repair contracts have been prepared for all the schools. We are notifying all the people who were selected and we expect those repairs to commence soon,” Minister Gomez told the Journal recently.

“It will be just over $3 million because of the work that we have to do in Grand Bahama.”

Minister Gomez said the Christie administration will also build some new classroom blocks.

“We have to build blocks at AF Adderley because it is a very old school,” he said. “We have to move away from the trailers that we have there now. So, we have made provisions to do the work in this upcoming budget year.”

“With regard to new schools, there is not any money to build any new schools this year. But we are looking at the reallocation of new students because we have a tremendous demand for children in the south and those schools are becoming overcrowded now.”

Minister Gomez said that problem has to be addressed this year.

“So, I am going to devise a plan with the administrators to address where the demand is coming from and I think that is going to be our main priority is making sure we can put schools in the area to address the demand,” he said.