Enhancing Campus Facilities – an Update

Author: Tim Nuttall

This year has seen three major building projects taking place on the campus: the conclusion of the Boys’ Sports Pavilion – just in time for the Easter Sports Festival; the Girls’ Sports Pavilion at the courts; and the new Boys’ Prep Classrooms building. Further enhancing the campus master plan and Facilities 2030, the landscape architects firm, Insite, has been appointed after a tender process – with the responsibility to develop a landscape master plan for our extensive campus.

Our building projects are funded from a number of sources. Firstly, there are the enrolment entrance fees and the capital development levy paid by our parents. We generate additional revenue through the hiring of our facilities, through interest earned on our cash reserves, and through asset depreciation calculated in the annual budget. Our Advancement Office is tasked with developing a donation stream for College projects, and we are seeing the early fruits of this in fundraising for our two Pavilions. We appreciate the contributions made by the Old Stithian Association to school projects.

In addition to the College’s annual capex provision, the St Stithians Foundation has granted R500k to each Pavilion project. The MySchool Fund, created by parents and alumni swiping their MySchool card, has provided a further R500k to each Pavilion. The fundraising campaigns for the two Sports Pavilions have a target of R5m each. In the case of the Boys’ Sports Pavilion, a total of R2,54m has been donated to date (October 2016). The donor and fundraising total for the Girls’ Sports Pavilion stands at R2,28m.

Interested donors for the two Sports Pavilions are encouraged to contact me, Carel Nolte (Chair of Council), Alistair Stewart, Dave Knowles, Jakes Fredericks, Ivanka Acquisto and Celeste Gilardi. We encourage all our parents to sign up for MySchool with St Stithians or Thandulwazi Academy as beneficiaries, or a combination of both as beneficiaries.

The two Sports Pavilions provide much-needed changing rooms, sports offices and social gathering spaces for parents, spectators and visitors. They are going to contribute significantly to the building of community at Saints.

The Boys’ Prep Classrooms for Grades 4 and 5, as well as a dedicated Art classroom and Science classroom, are designed as 21st-century learning spaces. The building includes a new staff room for the Boys’ Prep staff, replacing the cramped and insufficient current staff room. This striking building, and its facilities, will make an important contribution to the life of the Boys’ Prep. Design concepts there will flow into our classroom modernisation project across all our schools in future years.