the Spring.

Chairman of the school's Board of Governors, Calvin White, yesterday told The Royal Gazette preliminary plans have been agreed by the Board and the Ministry of Works and Engineering.

"We're hoping to break ground early next year,'' he added. "We will be doing a press release in a few weeks about this. But first we want to meet with the Berkeley family to discuss this with them.'' That meeting is expected to take place next week.

Berkeley's board plan to build a state-of-the-art school on the 7.42-acre site across the street from the present school in order to allow construction without disrupting classes.

They had originally planned to have the development completed by December 15, 2000. Berkeley admitted its last class of first-year students in September, 1996, in preparation for conversion to a senior secondary school.

But Mr. White later revealed that various events had transpired -- mainly CedarBridge Academy's problems with overcrowding and other issues -- to make the board review the basis upon which the Berkeley design would proceed.

At the latest, Mr. White said he expected the senior school -- which is to take in 96 new students next month to help alleviate overcrowding at CedarBridge -- to be completed by September, 2003.

However, former Education Minister Jerome Dill insisted he did not expect the opening of the senior school to be delayed by three years.

Government was working toward having it fully operational no later than 2001, he said.

But new Education Minister Tim Smith has stated that the new school -- which Government has allocated some $6 million to start developing -- is expected to come on line in 2002.

"We're on target,'' he said.