The Tribune

By KHRISNA VIRGIL

Tribune Staff Reporter

kvirgil@tribunemedia.net

THE Government plans to convert Our Lady’s Catholic Primary School into a special education centre for the disabled, Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald said.

While officials do not take over the property until September, the minister said the Christie administration plans to spend around $1 million on renovations.

He did not say when the facility would open.

Mr Fitzgerald said: “We intend to transform Our Lady’s into a special education centre for students in research and training to accommodate over 100 students there.

“(The) renovations (will) ensure that it is compatible to special needs children. It is extremely important and a critical advancement on behalf of the Bahamas. We anticipate that it will be the envy of this region and (we) will use it to catapult us even further as we understand the special needs and challenges that we have in this country.”

The government announced last November that both the Our Lady’s and St Bede’s schools would be leased to further state education. Our Lady’s closes in June,

Catholic education officials said then the schools would no longer host students when the term ended this year. They said financial constraints has caused the closures.

The Archdiocese at the time assured parents that children from the affected schools would have a place in one of the remaining Catholic institutions.

Additionally parents will be allowed, for one year, to pay the same tuition rate they would have paid at the former schools at another Catholic school.

Archbishop Patrick Pinder said: “As you can imagine, they (parents) weren’t necessarily happy. In retrospect I realise that I see so many of the marks of disbelief. I see the anger, the denial, all those aspects of real grief because people feel a sense of losing something valuable. I don’t think myself or the director aren’t affected by that so certainly it’s a difficult experience.”