OCHO RIOS, St Ann – Despite a donation of more than $800,000 for renovations, it is still unclear if classes will resume at St Ann’s Bay Infant School on Monday.

Principal Debbie Parsons-Morris told the Jamaica Observer on Wednesday that they are still awaiting approval from the Government to begin repairs needed to fix damage left by a fire in June.

The blaze gutted the brain builder block of the school, affecting its operations. No one was injured and the cause of the fire has not been determined.

“We’re waiting on approval from the Ministry of Education to do what we refer to as patch-up work so we can actually start for September 4. We are still without toilet facilities; that’s where our real problem is now, getting the bathrooms up and running. Except for that, we’re on our way,” Parsons-Morris said during a handover ceremony for the donation from members of the entertainment industry.

“We have actually been taking out some partitions and getting in more classroom space. So we have classroom space for all students, we have furniture; however, we are still short on bathroom facility,” she added.

Parsons-Morris said Wednesday’s donation, which was made by the Burning Spear Foundation and other friends of the school, will be used to get as much work done as possible. However, she could not guarantee that classes would be in full swing on Monday.

“I am not sure. I don’t want to say yet because if we get portable toilets then we can have school. We are looking at resources. We actually lost our smart boards in the fire and smart boards are really $1 million. However, we want to use a lot of the funds to do classroom resources because that’s where our real loss is,” she explained.

“We had millions of dollars’ worth of resources in the brain builder, that’s the area that was burnt out, and so the funds that we get we need to use that to get back some classroom resources,” the principal continued.

Deputy mayor and councillor for St Ann’s Bay Dallas Dickenson said the municipal corporation is committed to aiding the institution, and he noted that access had been granted to the neighbouring community centre for use as classroom space.

Meanwhile, representative of the Burning Spear Foundation, Mytania Samuels, said assistance came naturally from the reggae icon.

“What we have accumulated thus far in donation is $800,210. We are confident that we will reach $1 million by [Wednesday] evening. Again, what we’re seeing is a diversity of our local players in the reggae industry. We have young talent like Kabaka Pyramid pairing up with a Burning Spear to help a school. It says a lot about the heart. It tells us that we still have heart in this country, we no have rock stone in a chest,” he said.

The school is to accommodate 171 students this academic year, the lowest in its history. There were 194 enrolled last year this time.