Otumoetai Primary School is planning to farewell a signification part of its history – a classroom which has been on site for 115 years.

Principal Geoff Opie says the Ministry of Education allows each school a maximum 22 square metre area of floor space. To stay within its quota, and cater for an influx of six and seven-year-old students, the school may have to say goodbye to the 115-year-old building.

Geoff says, under the Ministry of Education's rules, the option to extend the classroom's floor space is not on the cards.

'The Ministry of Education doesn't want to do anything with the classroom. We need two more teaching spaces, so they're saying get rid of the building. Until that building goes, we're hamstrung.”

The classroom's fate is yet to be decided, but Geoff says the school is looking at demolishing or relocating the building.

Geoff knows the possibility of getting rid of the building risks upsetting a lot of people, but with the option to upgrade the classroom proving too costly, he says the school has been left with no choice.

The most cost effective option, Geoff says, is to convert other buildings around the school, including part of the library, into classrooms. Another option is to use one of the bigger classrooms as two separate classes.

Upgrading the historic class is believed will cost more than $220,000, while building two new classrooms would cost $375,000. The cheapest option, costing about $175,000, is getting rid of the classroom and expanding current teaching spaces.

A Ministry of Education spokesperson says the ministry wants to provide modern learning environments for students. 'Individual schools can decide how they achieve this, either through building new classrooms or refurbishing existing classrooms rooms. Quite often it is more beneficial for a school to build new.”

The ministry understands the primary school wants to remove the ‘D block' building, as it is not considered suitable for modern learning environment and is currently being used for a before and after school programme and not a classroom.

New Zealand Historic Places Trust lower northern area manager Fiona Low says the classroom is not registered with the trust or scheduled on Tauranga City Council's district plan, and therefore is not guaranteed protection.

However, because the classroom pre-dates 1900, Fiona says under the Historic Places Act the building is legally defined as archaeological and any demolition work carried out on the classroom requires archaeological authority from NZHPT.

'Although neither registered nor scheduled, the building clearly has heritage value relating to the school and its history,” says Fiona.

'The NZHPT would prefer to see the classroom remain on the school site, as this is its heritage context.”

Fiona says NZHPT would be very happy to work with the school to explore possible options in which the classroom may be retained and adaptively re-used.