Ground broken on new city classrooms

Whoever says Belize isn’t growing has not recently visited a local primary school. With classrooms nationwide bulging with budding scholars, more new buildings than ever are under construction. News 5 was on site today in Belize City at James Garbutt Seventh Day Adventist where ground was broken on a much needed set of classrooms for the school’s two hundred and seventy-eight students.

Mark Espat, Area Representative, Albert Division

“Working through the Ministry of Natural Resources we’ve able to acquire the property adjacent to the James Garbutt School and today we were able to break ground for the new school building, which will include five new classrooms and a new set of male and female bathrooms. We expect construction to start shortly and we hopefully the new school building will be completed by year’s end.”

Sandra Carr, Principal, James Garbutt School

“Some of the trials that we face here at this school is the space. The children are too close to each other. They have a lot of opportunity to talk a lot. So what we try to do is to swing them around, change students from one seat to the next just to get them quiet and pay more attention to their work.”

Mark Espat

“Many, many families in this area have their sons and daughters here in this school. Principal Sandra Carr, and the local Manager Reverend Gillette has been working very hard to provide the best expectation possible and I think that their efforts have shown up in the results of the national examination and the performance of the students. And we want to support their efforts by providing a more comfortable environment and also by making sure we keep our manifesto ’98 promise of expanding this school.”

Espat says that plans are also in the works for a new school building at Wesley Primary.