With a community library built in its grounds off the radar, Ashburton College principal Ross Preece. Photo supplied.Ashburton College’s new library project will now go back in the mix with as part of a replacement project of a number of the school’s buildings, says principal Ross Preece.

A late bid was made to have the college reconsidered as a site for the district’s new library, but the option proved unsuitable when it was assessed by Opus Architecture. That option might be out of the mix, but the need to replace the school’s library remained, he said.

The Ministry of Education and the school board agreed the future of the school’s buildings needed to be addressed, based on three factors – the suitability of the S68 buildings for today’s learning environment, the college’s predicted roll growth and the fact that some of the buildings were leaking, Preece said. “They are now in the process of putting together a business plan for upgrading our school as a whole. I’m calling them weekly to see where the plan is in the pipeline and they’ve told me, within six months – the wheels of the ministry’s property grind very slowly.”

The business plan would be stage one in the building replacement process and progress would depend on the money that was made available, he said.

“It’s a bit of a catch 22. We’ve got buildings that are in less than perfect condition but if you know you’re likely to get new buildings in 18 months you go light on maintenance but if it’s 2020 then we’d have to do some maintenance, but maintenance can become dead money,” he said.

Having a time frame for building replacement was critical, Preece said.

The college planned to build a state of the art toilet block but its location would depend on the business plan. Once the business plan was in place then funding streams and timelines could be established.

The college was one of the first schools in New Zealand to be built on the S68 design but modern learning needs were way out of step with those buildings, Preece said.

The school would have some input into building replacement priority but would see the library as the hub of the school, he said.

“Land is quite tight for us and part of the plan might be that we look at a whole lot of pre-fabs on the netball court while they knock some of the S68s over and start the rebuild.”

A similar rebuild has been undertaken at Kaiapoi High school.

‘This is exciting for our community and I’ll continue to keep the pressure on but it will be an exercise in patience.”

By Sue Newman © The Ashburton Guardian - 10 April 2017