It is one of the realities lamented by Second District Representative Melvin ‘Mitch’ Turnbull as he argued that the school and its environs have apparently been forgotten.

“I think everyone who has been paying attention for the last seven years [would notice that] I have been lamenting, lobbying, crying, fighting for a new school for the students, for the community of Jost Van Dyke – which is, by the way, the only public school that hasn’t taken on the name of anyone – but it has been a school that has been left behind and a community that have been left behind for a long time,” Turnbull said at a recent press conference.

Turnbull pointed out that this was especially so after the hurricanes of 2017 which caused extensive devastation to the territory.

The legislator argued that students who were from the second and third grades were housed in the same classroom and were in a building that was deemed structurally unsound.

A new $4M structure was recently commissioned in JVD that Turnbull said he was happy to see after lobbying for the facility since his entrance into representational politics in 2015.

“So, the fight for me to have yesterday [August 25] become a reality where the Premier provided the funding and we moved towards the contract signing and even a groundbreaking and the Minister of Education to have that school now commissioned to be built is indeed for me a very tremendous accomplishment,” Turnbull said.

But Turnbull said the facility that is being built will not only serve as a school, but will also serve as a community centre of sorts.

“So, it’s going to house a school, [and] be able to house community-type events as well as provide libraries for the public, resource centres, after-school programmes and also have the capacity to serve as a a hurricane shelter,” Turnbull explained. “The building is going to be designed to not just host the school but be able to do other things.”