Pupils of the Palmiste Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School will be head­ing to the new $13 mil­lion Ed­in­burgh 500 Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre when the new aca­d­e­m­ic term be­gins, af­ter their school was de­stroyed by fire.

The fire oc­curred on De­cem­ber 7 at the Long­denville school in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing.

It was re­vealed on Thurs­day that pupils will be giv­en a tem­po­rary space at the new fa­cil­i­ty. This was an­nounced by Ran­dall Mitchell, the act­ing Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, when he opened the cen­tre. Mitchell said this move was all about putting com­mu­ni­ties first with the spir­it of uni­ty.

He said, “We are now called up­on to sum­mon that com­mu­ni­ty spir­it now more than ever. Three weeks ago, tragedy struck a near­by com­mu­ni­ty, with a fire dis­plac­ing the class­es at the Palmiste Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School. “In times of cri­sis, such as the de­struc­tion of the Palmiste Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, so­cial uni­ty be­comes cru­cial and this com­mu­ni­ty is called up­on for this as­set (re­fer­ring to the new com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre) to be des­ig­nat­ed to pro­vide refuge for ap­prox­i­mate­ly six months to 120 or so stu­dents and teach­ers now dis­placed.”

Mitchell said the oth­er pupils from the school will be at­tend­ing class­es else­where.

“The rest of those stu­dents, as I am ad­vised, they would find a tem­po­rary home at the Long­denville (Gov­ern­ment) Pri­ma­ry School. The up­per storey (of the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre) would be con­fig­ured in­to a safe space ded­i­cat­ed to teach­ing and learn­ing for those young minds, who have now un­for­tu­nate­ly found them­selves un­able to ac­cess their school,” Mitchell said.

He added that the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre would not on­ly ac­com­mo­date the class­es but serve as a space for com­mu­ni­ty build­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. He said the fa­cil­i­ty has an au­di­to­ri­um that can seat 200 peo­ple and a cy­ber cafe area that will al­low op­por­tu­ni­ties through on­line con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Mitchell said the new fa­cil­i­ty will al­so al­low for greater so­cial, ed­u­ca­tion­al and cre­ative projects.