Temporary classrooms to make way for proper school building
The Department of Education is funding the project.
Construction of the new Dome Primary School building on Fourth Avenue, Parys, is progressing well, with the backlog from the heavy summer rains, followed by the shutdown, almost caught up.
For the school’s 344 Grade R to Grade 8 learners, it will be a joyful day when temporary classrooms and barren ground finally make way for a proper single-storey school building and grassy playground. The 20-month building contract ends in May 2024. The contractor, White Leopard, started in August 2022. The school is built on municipal grounds, earmarked for the building of the school as a joint project of the Departments of Education and Public Works. Illegal dumping previously sullied the vacant lot, and the hope is that the development of the land will benefit this residential area.
Dome Primary School opened on 11 January 2017 with 58 learners from Grade R to Grade 3 who started their new school year as English-medium Dome Primary School learners. At first, they were accommodated at the A.M. Lembede School in Tumahole.
A few months later, three temporary classrooms awaited them at their school premises in Loop- and Delver streets.
The original three temporary classrooms quadrupled to 12.
Along with the school principal, Wilna van Buren-Scheele, the teachers, supporting personnel, and general workers, they did a splendid job in bringing colour where there once was nothing.
Once the building project is completed and the school officially opened, it will be renamed Father Balink Primary School.
The land where Dome Primary School is currently situated was zoned for educational purposes in the seventies. The mobile classrooms were only temporary, and the school has needed a permanent structure for a long time.
In 2020, engineers visited the school premises and confirmed that the clay soil and wetland would make preparing the land and building too expensive. Since safety and cost are considerations when building a school, the decision was to build on the Fourth Avenue premises.
