Parents 'tentatively optimistic' Bishop Feild Elementary will reopen

The provincial government is still waiting for a final structural engineering report, but Education Minister Dale Kirby says he doesn't have any plans to close Bishop Feild Elementary School in St. John's.

Kirby told reporters at this week's budget announcement that $15 million has been earmarked for repairs and maintenance. 

"We don't have the final report yet on Bishop Feild, when we get the final report from the structural engineer we will fix the problem, we have the money to do that," said Kirby on Tuesday. 

"I don't have any plan to close it."

'We're tentatively optimistic'

Part of the school gym's ceiling collapsed on Oct. 24, 2017, and students have been attending classes at the former School for the Deaf on Topsail Road since then.

Parents and students have been worried the 90-year-old building would require too much work to make it worth the cost of repairs.

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"We're tentatively optimistic," said Bishop Feild school council chair Brad Stone. 

"You know nothing [is] official and concrete, until they get the final report they can't commit either way, but it kind of indicates to me and to everyone that they're leaning towards this being a fixable problem," he told CBC Radio's St. John's Morning Show.

Stone said he has been speaking with the school district regularly and there is every indication it will be an easy repair job.

However, he doesn't expect things will move quickly enough for students to return to the building in time for the start of the new school year in September. 

"Unfortunately we're nowhere near a timeline. It's a government project, so as fast as they have been moving, it's still government so it's slow, there's processes that everything has to go through, it's got to go out to tender," he said.

"The fear it won't reopen is starting to shrink a bit, generally people are feeling pretty good at this point."