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The new Grava school building in Savognin is already full to capacity before it opens at the end of August. (symbolic image)
sda
Even before the new Grava school building in Savognin opens at the end of August, it is already too small: due to a lack of capacity, a sixth grade class must continue to be taught in a temporary facility.
The Graubünden municipality of Surses opens the new Grava school building in Savognin at the end of August. But even before it opens, the new 25-million-euro building is already reaching its capacity limits. As reported by "Südostschweiz", the building is already at full capacity. Specifically, the current sixth year has to be split up because the classes are too large, but there is no additional classroom. The affected pupils will therefore remain in the temporary building in Nolaz for the time being.
In future, the new school building will house the elementary school, several kindergartens and a canteen and secure the infrastructure in the long term. Municipal president Daniel Wasescha rejects the accusation of poor planning. "We are a long way from wrong planning," he told "Südostschweiz". "Space is tight, but if we had planned five extra rooms in reserve, for example, we wouldn't have gotten away with it politically," he continues.
The need for a new building was undisputed. According to school board president Gianna Sonder, the existing premises did not meet either technical or spatial requirements. "The old building had two sockets per room - if you plugged in the vacuum cleaner, the fuse blew." Space was also a problem: "In the old building, we sometimes had to teach in the corridor."
The situation is also explosive because the planning of the new building was based on long-term declining pupil numbers. However, the population in Surses has actually grown by almost six percent since 2019. At the end of 2025, around 2465 people lived in the municipality. The number of births has also been at a similar level to the current particularly large cohort for several years.
Municipal president Wasescha sees this as the real challenge: "If the children come into a year group that is already full, of all things, we have a problem," she told "Südostschweiz". At the same time, the new school building should increase the attractiveness of the municipality as a place to live. Whether the capacities will be sufficient in the long term will become clear in the coming years.
