WHAKA SCHOOL SITE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 716, 16 December 1933, Page 6

WHAKA SCHOOL SITE

CHAS. H. L.

WPRTHINGTON.

Sir, — A letter signed hy A. P. Smith as chairman of the Whaka School Committee calls for .comment. Though, not in the past, seeimg eye t-o eye with Cr. Banks when headmaster of the Whiaka School I can bear testimony to the honesty of his -j purpose in protecting his scholars. Mr. Smith points out that there have been no accidents at the school crossing. That there have not been is to the credit of Mr. Banks who used to insist on his pupils walking to a point above the turn off to the hotel, and crossing at right angles to the footpath'. The habituia'l motorist who has not had to brake hard to dodge children is rare. The principal complaints as to the danger were made by public vehicle proprietors. The existing school site is somewhat over three acres and the offer in exchange is an area of eight acres of perfectly level and well conditioned land. The existinig buildings are out of date and the older portion in not too sound a condition. The value of the block to the golf club is admitted, and the fact that the club brings, and has brought, more money into the town than any other institution or all the institutions combined may well be conceded. It is also a source of revenue to the transport companies. The contention that Mr. Banks is a biassed partisan — against his conscienoe — of the golf club is ridiculous.

A point that the advocates of the present site may have missed or have been ignoriant of is the important fact that for nearly a quarter of a century the sanitary pans of the school were emptied and buried in the grounds of the school. In this point Mr. Banks testimony would be •illuminating to parents. There is hardly an uncontaminated patch in the block, and in the light of modern knowledge of the persistence of germs this is of hygenic -importanee. Many typhoid and diphetheria epidemics have come, and come again, in the period eovered by the last three decades. The statemisnt 'that the school is to be pushed into the "background occupied by the sulphurous section" is simply untrue. The seetion offered is freer from sulphur, less exposed to dust, and secure from the danger of traffic. The golf club referenee is undeserving of comment. — (I am, etc.,

Rotorua, Dec. 15.