School Committee Is Becoming Cynical, A Contributor Suggests

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 90, 1 September 1950, Page 5

School Committee Is Becoming Cynical, A Contributor Suggests

(Contributed)

It is reliably reported that more than a trace of cynicism is being exhibited by members of the Whakatane Primary School Committee when they review the progress being made toward the establishment

of a separate school to serve the Ohope population. Some two and a half years have elapsed since the Education Board and the Department of Maori Affairs, then called

the Native Department, first entered into negotiations for the leasing of an area of what is known as the Caledonian Sports Ground. Perhaps the change in name of the Department made it necessary for the negotiations to be stopped and started anew—this has not been revealed. However, about September last, the Minister of Education approved the Education Department’s recommendation that the Education Board be permitted to accept a lease from the Department of Maori Affairs, recommended by the Board of Maori Purposes and approved by the appropriate Minister. Obviously this was a most important matter, not to be disposed of as simply as declaring a war or some such triviality.

At this stage, the committee fondly hoped that, perhaps, the new school might be established by the beginning of the 1950 educational year and an enquiry in February elicited the information that “the lease was almost ready for execution.” Iff April, there appeared to be a techico-legal hitch which was too involved to explain; at the beginning of July “the lease was almost ready for execution”; on Tuesday of- this week, “the lease was almost

ready for execution”! In reply to a rather terse demand by the committee’s secretary by telephone for definite news, it was learned that although a very nice lease had been prepared by the Department of Maori Affairs, no provision had been made in it for access from the road line to the proposed school grounds and that it would have to be amended. c

The School Committee and the parents of the children attending the side school at Ohope under most inadequate conditions may well be excused if they feel a sense of deep frustration. The history of the negotiations for the new school site in Whakatane, similarly, has brought the committee to the verge of despair. They are now suggesting that, instead of the words “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here” being engraved over the entrance to the Education Board’s premises, a better slogan would be, “A thousand ages in our sight are like an evening gone.”