STUDENTS at Mt Cook School have already seen benefits from the construction of a new hall, despite it not being opened until next month.
Principal Sandra McCallum (right) says the children have shown a keen interest in the project from the outset.
“When it was in its very early stages we all went in and sat inside as it was being built and we had a look at what a building in progress looks like.”
Even before construction of the $820,000 hall began, children got a unique experience from the historic places and tenths trusts decision that the land required an archaeological dig.
“The kids interviewed the archaeologist, and went out as she was digging and watched. That was absolutely fascinating.
“She found a lot of ceramics, things like what would have been an old rubbish pit. They found piles of the cottages that were there around the 1870s/1880s, and she found a lot of photographs that she showed the kids of what was there before.”
The school has never had a hall, and Ms McCallum sees the new building as having a range of uses.
“It’s going to make a huge difference to us as a school in terms of being able to run PE sports in the winter and hold performances.
“In the past we’ve completely and utterly been weather dependent, so it will enable us to have whole school assemblies without having to take furniture out of a classroom and squeeze everybody in.”
And it is not just the school that will see the benefits, with the wider Mt Cook and Wellington community having access outside of school hours.
“There’s a real shortage of hall spaces in the area, so we regard it very much as a community venue.”
The school is now the base for Mt Cook’s Civil Defence Centre, which relocated late last year from the Seventh-day Adventist Church on Tasman St.
“The motivating factor was partly that we were going to have a brand new, hopefully earthquake-proof building,” she says.
The final project is slightly over-budget, with $644,000 from a 2007 Ministry of Education programme, and the rest from grants and the school’s operations fund.
The school will fundraise over the next two years to recoup some of the operations money.
Families, children and residents are invited to the official opening ceremony on Saturday, May 7, at 9.30am, the first week after school holidays.
“We’re just waiting to find out who’s going to open it. We’ve asked the Prime Minister, but we’re not sure yet.”
