KING COUNTRY SCHOOLS

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 345, 15 March 1911, Page 5

KING COUNTRY SCHOOLS

TWO INTERVIEWS. DIVERGING VIEWS. "Yes," sail! Mr C. J. Parr, the chairman of the Board of Education, "I have seen what the chairman of Te Kuiti School Committee said in the "Herald" the other morning, and I haven't much to sav in reply. But you can say this: I am satisfied with reference to the alleged grievances or hardships that they exist mostly in the imaginations of one or two gentlemen, who are bent upon making mischief. In the matter of education the King Country receives exactly the same treatment as does any other part of the Dominion. InUeed, the Education Board has gone out of its way to assist backblock settlers, where there was only one or two families, by establishing 'household' and 'aided' schools. The board has never, in any instance, refused the reasonable applications of settlers. I expect to find, when I visit the district next weelc, that the agitation is almost entirely a fictitious one, with a view, no doubt, to the next board election, worked up by one or two aspirants to seats on the board. Investigation, so far, has clearly disproved the reasonableness of the two or three complaints that have come from this quarter. It is singular that practically the only grumblers in all our large district, are these two or three King Country agitators!" Asked by a "Chronicle" respresentative whether he had seen the report of Mr Parr's remarks, the Rev. R. Mitchell, chairman of Te Kuiti School Committee, said: —

"Yes, I have seen a paragraph in Saturday's 'Herald,' and have always thought that in the chairman of the Education Board we had a gentleman who would not have used his dignified position to make unwarranted and unjustfiable personal aspersions. I, as one, not of two or three, but of the many whom he designated agitators and mischief makers in the King Country, was not aware an election was pending. And I think lam expressing the opinion of the many, when I say that if any of us had been aspiring to a seat on the board, we would not have sought it by stirring up an agitation that was unsupported by facts. We had hoped to receive a fair hearing for our grievances on the chairman's visit, but evidently, from his remarks, he has arrived at a conclusion, and come to a decision, even before visiting the district. There seems to be only one course left, and that i 3 that the committees and settlers will have to make their grievances known through another channel."

FILTHY SCHOOL DESKS. The Auckland Education Board have just forwarded through their contractor a consignment of school deskß for the Mangarca school. From appearances the desks have been for many years in use elsewhere, being worse than dilapidated, and from a sanitary point of view, unfit for use. Several parents have a decided objection to these old desks being placed in the school, owing to the danger of their children contracting disease. The board have evidently considered that anything is good enough for the backblocks, and the King Country is a suitable dumping ground for the rubbish of the town schools. It is high time some movement was made in the direction of forming a new Education Board in the Rohe Potae, as the long distance from Auckland militates against the efficient administration of these backblock schools. It 13 to be hoped that the Mangaroa school committee will rise to the occasion and do their duty to the parents by not allowing the board to enforce the use of these desks in the school. — Mangaroa Correspondent.