JGHS different concept from CHHS

| 25/09/2019 | 23 Comments
Cayman News Service

(CNS): The government’s application to re-start work on the long stalled John Gray High School was given the final green light during the Central Planning Authority meeting on Wednesday. But the new design paints a picture of a very different school to the Clifton Hunter High School facility. The controversy over the cost and design of the schools goes back more than a decade, but it now seems clear that the Ministry of Education has abandoned ideas proposed by Premier Alden McLaughlin when he was education minister.

As education minister between 2005 and 2009, McLaughlin had had a vision of three very high quality, modern, open-plan schools that would be very similar in their approach to education and very different from traditional schools. The plan at the time had been to build a school in West Bay as well as Clifton Hunter in Frank Sound and a brand new John Gray facility, but things began to go wrong at a very early stage.

Between the economic crash and major battles with the general contractor, the dream of three state-of-the-art schools turned into a nightmare.

While the project has been largely at a standstill since 2012, what little progress there was happened piecemeal. However, government is now ready to re-start the main JGHS project, though the new plans on view at the CPA meeting showed a much more traditional school building and campus.

The John Gray site was originally designed to follow the CHHS design of a schools-within-schools academy model in an open campus of interconnected buildings. But the new plans show a more consolidated project, with one main school building at the central focus of the campus.

In its submission to the CPA the ministry said there were “concerns that the schools-within-schools model and the open-plan model implemented at Clifton Hunter was proving challenging”.

As a result, government has opted for a complete redesign and said that the structural frames of two buildings that were completed before the project went off the rails in 2012 will be demolished “due to their poor state”.

The new school has been designed to cater for at least 1,200 students and a potential increase in student numbers int he future.

“The new design will provide hugely improved teaching conditions and enable a curriculum model that provides more opportunities for improving performance and increasing engagement, including enhanced ICT, outdoor sports facilities, practical vocational space and other world class facilities for teaching traditional and new skills,” the ministry stated in the submissions, adding that students, teachers and parents had been engaged with the development of the design.

While there will be more than one building, the campus will be consolidated around the main school block, where a single entrance will provide access directly into the building’s heart. “Between each of the wings, landscaped courtyards provide social gathering spaces and incorporate shading structures,” the ministry stated.

Anticipated to cost around $40 million, the project will be delivered in phases, with the main school to be completed by August 2021 and the playing fields by August 2022. The delivery of Project C is dependent on the repurposing of the George Hicks Site for the Cayman Islands Further Education Centre (CIFEC) and other users in order to free the site for redevelopment.

The CPA also approved government’s application for a new classroom building at the Red Bay Primary School. That $1 million project is to accommodate the growing school population.


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Category: development, Government Administration, Local News, Politics

Comments (23)

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  1. Anonymous says:

    For God’s sake no to Canadian Architects. Windows, for one thing, should be able to open.

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  2. Kman says:

    Speeches is the best way to explain the nonsense of PPM( People’s Puppet Movement)and JuJu should have a clown parade as this sums her up. They’re all about egos and creating so-called legacies by building schools but not creating an effective education system that produce excellent results and future citizens.

    West Bay needs a high school so does both Prospect & Savanah area but for maximum 500 students and not cost the taxpayers more than $15 million each. Pay top class teachers more and start investing in an apprenticeship program.

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  3. Anonymous says:

    Great double dip. All the contracts and favours first time around, money thrown away, now we get to start the same process all over again with the same people in charge (and no doubt exactly the same outcome).

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  4. Anonymous says:

    Alden Moses McKeeva Tara Joey Roy Julie Dwayne and the band of unity merry men must be shitting themselves right about now! Everyday more evidence that they must all be voted out to save the future of Cayman.

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  5. Vincit Omnia Veritas says:

    Oh how I love a sweet sweet revolution. I hope the government doesn’t wise up and continues to make a mockery of themselves while being secretive and incapabale of handling such projects like the John Gray, Clifton Hunter high schools, the new Airport and proposed cruise dock.

    The people are banding together and the government doesn’t like that it can’t control the will of the people anymore the Referendum is proof. Remember it’s all about control which the C.I.G. is losing steadily everyday as more and more are waking up to their B.S.

    Government( to direct, to rule) not here bo bo you listen and abide by the will of the people. The people get to decide what goes and what doesn’t you have failed the people for too long now they are waking up. Remember that.

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  6. Anonymous says:

    All sounds goos to me. Slow but good.

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  7. Anonymous says:

    Well at least we didnt end up another Venezuela which is where we were headed under the previous leader

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  8. Anonymous says:

    5:42am – No, it hasn’t always been this way. There was a time when less formally educated political leaders respected the system and took decisions made on the advice of more educated and experienced administrative professionals (local and overseas) and our development through the 1960’s and early 1970’s saw genuine progress.

    Then the immoral, egotistic, greedy and corrupt politicians took hold and their styles became the norm! Flip the system on its head – dictate rather than be advised, introduce “pay-for-play” cronyism and “brotherhood” politics, promote and accommodate ineptness and incompetence in the public service, keep a firm view on the inside of their own pockets instead of the direction of our islands, create an atmosphere of instability for the careers of anyone who did not concur with their will and create a public servants rife with corrupt morons!!

    To date Norman Bodden, Ezzard Miller and Roy Bodden have been the only senior political leaders who have challenged the wrongs. Look where it got them! Sidelined!!!

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  9. Anonymous says:

    Here we go again, the main principals of the PPM (who are part of Unity) get another chance to waste more public funds to correct their own initial mistakes! Humans will make mistakes but repeating the same mistakes is not usually a trait of intelligent humans.

    That point is clearly evident in this case and specifically evident in the Caymanian voting public’s repeated mistakes in continuing to re-elect these morons and failing to hold them accountable!!

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  10. Anonymous says:

    Face up to it already Cayman. Any project,(roads, the dump, garbage pick up, affordable housing, the never gonna be built cruise piers, and the schools will never be done with competence. Cayman islands Government does not and never will have the skill, experience, and mental fortitude to tackle anything bigger than cleaning a yard. Most governments don’t. The difference is most governments get the skill to do the jobs but here they do it themselves. Mostly because it is a welfare country and they have to give money to themselves first before they give it to competent workers. Always been like this and will not change in this lifetime. Caymanian.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Our whole party-based political system is corrupted and broken. The two parties were shredded by voters at last election – with CDP only winning 3 seats. We have 19 electoral districts, when we really only need 5, with much lower comp, and no double dipping. The low bar for candidacy is compounded by the requirement that they have had a Caymanian grandparent – which hasn’t guaranteed any additional degree of faithfulness, and/or service to people, value for money, or fidelity to good governance and the oaths of office.

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    • Say it like it is says:

      5.42am You forgot to include the airport project with it’s “heavenly” but useless arches, an absolute disaster. After long delays and $70 million and counting, we have to start all over again as it still cannot handle the increased passenger traffic.

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    • Anonymous says:

      I came in the 70’s when Cayman was a wonderful place to live. I threw my heart and soul into island living, reared and educated my children in Cayman until it was time for university. I left 3 years ago no longer able to stomach the nepotism, cronyism, the sidelining of professional people, the hiring of incompetent ones and on and on. I still miss old Cayman but not the new inferior one.

  11. Anonymous says:

    When fools are in charge of teaching they teach foolish things to the new fools.

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  12. Schools soon come said Alden and Co ( Completed c. 2023???) says:

    I remember coming out of primary school and hearing those schools would be ready for us soon
    I have long since graduated and they are still trying to figure out how to build the second out of the total 3 that they promised

    The fact that the man who orchestrated all of this mess, didn’t lose his seat but instead was rewarded with party leadership and 2 terms as the Premier
    Utterly appalling and a black stain on the idea that anyone on these islands is held to account by the electorate
    I am now in my 20s and they are STILL building these schools from over 10 years ago

    Ludicrous

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  13. Anonymous says:

    Jesus Christ. $6mln and a decade down the tubes, and another $40mln to halfway fix it. This is the PPM. Wear it like the fiscally careless idiots you’ve proven to be. Please be extremely wary of charlatans bearing gifts, or those offering cruise and port solutions for problems that don’t exist.

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    • Caveat Emptor says:

      We need to accept there is no difference amongst the current Premier and his predecessors McKeeva Bush and Juliana O’Connor-Connolly. He is egoistical enough that he may be the worst of the bunch for Caymanians.

      How can anyone come to expect any better from Alden McLaughlin who has a track record of expensive failures. Look at the facts starting with:

      1. His most expensive failure the clifton hunter high school that costs double the original budget built without separating walls in the class rooms. It defies all logic costing $110m to build and complete.

      2. Look at the john gray high school which remains in derelict conditions for over a decade. It is an example of his leadership or lack thereof, his arrogance and mismanagement. It remains the definition of wasted time and money by Alden McLaughlin and his governments he has lead.

      3. The new leaking airport without jet ways so passengers are all soaked during the rains. This project was led by Moses but the buck stops at the very top including Premier Alden McLaughlin.

      4. Next up is white elephant cruise dock and the inevitable cost overruns. If they cannot get things correct with land based projects look out for the irreversible damage to a project that will potentially damage the seven mile beach because of slit despite claims from Alden and his government.

      5. His partnership with McKeeva Bush to guarantee his position as premier in 2017. This decision cost him every shred of his integrity and the moral high ground while destroying both the PPM and UDP as political parties.

      The above are all monuments to his ego, leadership and political legacy. How can he and his ppm be trusted?

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      • Anonymous says:

        “1. His most expensive failure the clifton hunter high school that costs double the original budget built without separating walls in the class rooms. It defies all logic costing $110m to build and complete.”

        My recollection is that this was a fixed price contract for 50M and when McKeeva took over from PPM, he declared publicly that the govt was broke (to embarrass the PPM), causing the contractor to exercise their right to demand a bond to ensure payment for work done.

        The Govt. refused and contractor walked off job. Govt. then sued contractor, but lost in court.

        McKeeva’s govt then continued the work piecemeal, giving favoured local contractors bits of the job here and there where politically expedient. The final price tag was over 100M, but I don’t think it is fair to blame that on the PPM, as much as I am not a fan of Alden,

        Please correct me if any of this is wrong as I only wish for the truth to be known.

        Signed,

        The original “Truthseeker”

    • Anonymous says:

      They got it because the UDP or whatever they call themselves now failed so badly. Udp will get it next time because PPM failed so badly.Caymanian choices are Dumb and Dumber.

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  14. ppm Distress Signal says:

    Alden’s legacy of failure for all to see after more than a decade still haunts cayman

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