Approval to expand classrooms

AFTER years of waiting, Hope Christian College has received approval to expand its campus giving much-needed room for the growing student body.

The college, situated in Roelands with 250 students from kindergarten to Year 12, has been waiting for approval from the Harvey Shire Council to move its classrooms onto 7.4ha of adjacent land.

Primary school, high school and science classrooms will be moved to the new campus with the arts, including music, drama, dance, woodwork and VET studies, remaining on the existing campus.

College principal Peter Stone said the land for the new campus was bought five years ago and the school had gone through rezoning and approvals to move the buildings.

“The school community’s been waiting quite a while,” he said.

Some of the high school buildings have been moved to the new site, with the first phase of moving the rest of the buildings expected to be at the beginning of next semester.

“We’re hoping to do the first move at the beginning of next semester,” he said.

Mr Stone said the school campus did not have enough space for its population and needed room to expand.

“We’ve got too many pupils here and we need the space,” he said.

However, Mr Stone said the school had limits on how far it would want to grow the student body.

“We don’t want to become too big a school,” he said.

“We don’t want to go over 500.”

Mr Stone said one benefit of the wait has been that the school has already installed its football oval with a reticulation system and netball courts on the new site.