De­mo­li­tion of the Palmiste Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, which was gut­ted in a fire last month, may not start un­til the end of the month.

This is be­cause Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad says while the re­quest to de­mol­ish the gut­ted school has been re­ceived, it will be dis­cussed when the cor­po­ra­tion meets on Jan­u­ary 8.

Ram­per­sad said he will seek ap­proval for the de­mo­li­tion so that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry can start to re­build the school in the short­est pos­si­ble time.

“We don’t want the Palmiste Gov­ern­ment School to end up like some schools which have to re­main in a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, tem­ple or church for years. I, along with oth­er elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, will be lob­by­ing the min­istry to erect a tem­po­rary struc­ture on the site of the old school un­til a per­ma­nent and pos­si­bly a larg­er build­ing can be erect­ed,” he said.

“The com­mu­ni­ty is grow­ing and more hous­ing de­vel­op­ments are planned for this area, so a big­ger school will be need­ed in the long term.”

Class­es for Stan­dards Three and Five pupils have been re­lo­cat­ed to the Long­denville Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, while class­es will be housed in the new $13 mil­lion Ed­in­burgh 500 Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre as soon as all the nec­es­sary in­fra­struc­ture is in­stalled.