New building for Te Ranga School and Hawk Academy home

Te Ranga School principal Brendan Wilson in front of part of the area where a new block is to be built.

Te Ranga School's Hawks will soon have their own nest.

During the last school holiday, demolition of one the school's classrooms was completed, opening up an area is to be developed to add extra facilities.

The Ministry of Education funded new building will house two classrooms with a science lab and cooking facilities.

Principal Brendan Wilson says the new building will be used primarily by the school's year 7 and 8 students - the Hawk Academy.

''The years 7 and 8s will be shifting into that class, so we want it to be a real feeling that, when you leave the primary part of Te Ranga, you are shifting into an intermediate class.''

Outside there will be a space specially designed for the older students.

''We'll have a concrete table tennis table, volleyball and things like that, so the intermediate students are a little bit separate and special and different from the rest of the school. That's part of the plan.''

The demolished building was part of a larger leaky building that was partly removed two years ago.

''They got half way and found the second half wasn't as mouldy. The Ministry only provided a little class for the class to move into and the teacher said 'we can't stay in here, its too small'.''

The partly demolished building was made good and used for a further two years until it was demolished.

The new building will be bigger.

''We do lots of outside stuff - with the environment and visits and farms - we use our environment really well, but this is another indoor space that provides areas to explore areas of the curriculum.''

The Hawk Academy students sell lunches once a week to subsidise the trips they do and the cooking facilities will be available for them to use for this.

Tenders for the new building will be going out shortly and Brendan says he hopes the new building will be ready for the start of the 2020 school year.