WESTERN BUREAU — When the school year began in September, the Granville All- Age School in St James was faced with the dilemma of finding the space to accommodate 1,328 students. However, the 52 year-old school was unable to take about 40 students.

The Ministry of Education subsequently gave them permission to build a small classroom and all the students were accommodated. But the facility was still overcrowded, with some classrooms divided into two.

That is expected to change soon.

The Jamaica Social Investment Fund yesterday signed a contract for the expansion and equipping of the school. As is normally the case with JSIF projects, the community will have to provide at least five per cent of the $5.9-million contract cost. They will spend a little over $300,000 to cover security costs for the building material once work begins at the end of the month, furnish the staff room, bush and clear the site and provide landscaping after the work ends.

Under the contract, which will last for five months, the school’s leaking roof will be repaired, and a new classroom block will be built to accommodate three furnished classrooms. There will also be a new staff room, principal’s office and staff bathroom.

The school’s principal Serva Fletcher expressed her delight at the prospect of more space.

“We are tightly packed so we welcome what JSIF is doing,” she said.

She added that she had no doubt that the members of the Parent Teacher’s Association, who had put up the funds required to meet JSIF’s requirement of community input, would willingly help to see the project through. And while she wished that the space could become available sooner than five months time, she said she was grateful to JSIF and community participants.

“If they could do it faster that would be good,” Fletcher said. “But I’ll settle for the five months once we get somewhere to put the students.”