INSIDE GRENADA JANUARY 13, 2008 by Wallace J.A GRENVILLE: The St. Andrew’s Anglican Secondary School (SAASS) commenced its heats program last week - the first week of the new school term. The heats is a build-up to the school’s Inter-House sports meeting which is scheduled to take place on February 6, 2008 – the day before Independence Day. SAASS sports is one of the most anticipated sporting events in the parish of St. Andrew. Based on recent points standing, Julien House (red), last year’s winner, has already taken the lead with 101 points, followed by Pigott (green) on 90 points, Layne (yellow) on 67 points and Nash (blue) on 65 points. The competition this year is expected to be very intense as both students and teachers of the institution keep their eyes focused not only on organizing the best sports meeting in years but also on re-capturing the Intercol title which it narrowly missed out on last year. The students of the school seem to be very excited about competition this year especially since they have now returned to a beautiful, fully renovated school building. On Monday last week (January 07), the doors of the main building at SAASS re-opened to accommodate students – the first time this has happened since the devastating hurricane of 2004 (Ivan), which caused severe structural damage to the building. Financing for the SAASS Rehabilitation Project came from the World Bank and the European Union and is estimated to have cost somewhere in the region of EC$3, 000, 00.00. The contractor was F.A Jeremiah & Associates and the Executing Agency was the Project Coordination Unit in the Ministry of Finance. During the post Hurricane Ivan years, students of SAASS were first housed under UNICEF tents and then in roughly constructed ply buildings on the school’s multipurpose court (which has been unavailable for sporting activities since then). In spite of the many inconveniences faced over the years, students and teachers of the school were able to rapidly adjust to the new environment and maintain the school’s excellent performances in academics as well as in various sporting disciplines. Last term posed some very serious challenges for SAASS. When renovation work finally commenced on the main school building sometime prior to the August vacation, alternative arrangements had to be made to accommodate the school’s massive population of over 800 students because it was unsafe for students to be housed in an area where heavy construction work was taking place. The students therefore had to be housed at two centers – one at Telescope and the other in Grenville. Since the Grenville center has only four classrooms, the students of the seven Form 1s, Forms 2 and 3 had to be accommodated at that facility based on a daily rotation system. Teachers, on the other hand, were either shuttled or had to walk the distance between Telescope and Grenville throughout the school day to teach their classes. At present, all students are back in school full time. Because of the large number of students at the school however, and the limited space available, four forms are still housed at the Grenville Handicraft Center and a permanent staff has been attached to that campus. A new wing is expected to be constructed at the main building at Telescope sometime during 2008-09. When the construction of that new wing is completed, it is expected that all students will once again be accommodated at the Telescope building.