Gloucester eighth grade students will have an additional semester in modular classrooms due to the completion of a new middle school on T.C. Walker Road being pushed out to April 2015, Gloucester School Board members were told Tuesday.

School officials had previously said the school, which will replace the tornado-ravaged Page Middle School, would be ready for occupancy by December 2014. While awaiting its construction, 450 eighth graders are housed in mobile classrooms on the Gloucester High School campus.

"We don’t feel that’s realistic at this time," school division superintendent Ben Kiser said of the December 2014 prediction. He noted that while the division prepares to open a new school, it will also be making arrangements for restoring Peasley Middle School as a sixth through eighth grade campus. Currently, all county six and seventh graders attend Peasley.

Kiser also said that teachers have been forced to move several times already, both due to the Page destruction and budget cuts that have brought new assignments for several personnel. He said it would be better to ask them to relocate again following the 2015 summer break rather than mid-school year during the 2014 winter break.

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