"We have had a discussion with the council, but nothing formal," school board of trustees chairman John Stalker said.
"The discussion was about the use of reserve land as play areas because the ministry [of education] won't build buildings on somebody else's land. It's a policy they have."
The discussion between Mr Stalker, school principal Debbie Dickson and Queenstown Lakes Mayor Vanessa van Uden a week ago was to keep the council informed about ideas the board submitted to the ministry.
"If we increased the number of students on our site it would be good to have further space available to ourselves," Mr Stalker said.
The play area idea and other proposals for the short-term, the mid-term and for long-term solutions to resolve the school's enrolment zone issue have been sent by the board to Education Minister Anne Tolley.
Some of the handful of solutions for the Remarkables Primary School, which related to all other schools in the Wakatipu, involved a second campus for Remarkables Primary, hopefully on either potential site for the new secondary school, and a dedicated technology hub for all year 7 and year 8 pupils in the Wakatipu.
The board was waiting to hear feedback from Mrs Tolley before disclosing to the public what their ideas and potential solutions were, in the next round of community consultation, on a date yet to be decided.
Trustees would wait for ministerial feedback before considering whether to pursue their idea of asking the council about using reserves for play areas.
"We've been working very hard on lots of ideas for the minister to see if we can go forward without having to reduce our enrolment zone, although we are still proceeding with the proposal to go to the ministry [for approval] on September 12," Mr Stalker said.
"We don't see this as getting a short-term answer in a hurry. There are cost implications with everything we've proposed and we are still proceeding with our proposed enrolment zone reduction as instructed."
Asked if the council reserves could be used by the school to build extra classrooms instead of play areas, Mr Stalker said the ministry would not build on public land and the board did not believe it would get resource consent approval because the reserves were within the air noise boundaries of Queenstown Airport.
He did not think the land zone could be changed even if the council gave the reserves to the ministry and expected the airport would oppose any application to build on the reserves.
