Schools start '95 in good heart

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 12, Issue 571, 31 January 1995, Page 3

Schools start '95 in good heart

Raetihi School starts 1995 with a full staff that includes a new deputy principal. David Fi sher comes from Tairua School on the Coromandel Peninsula, where he was principal of the small school, to take up the DP's position. Also new on the staff are Lois Hulbert who takes on the special needs classes. Mrs Hulbert returns to the area from Cambridge Intermediate where she was deputy principal some years ago. She once lived at Orautoha. Bruce Francis takes on a job in the senior school, coming from Patea. He is an ex-Raetihi School pupil and in fact finds himself working alongside one of his past teachers. School principal Gary Fountain said the school was looking forward to a successful year, building on the achievements of 1994, such as the Maori cultural festival. He said there were some permanent staff appointments to be made during the first term. Ohakune spends ops money on staff Ohakune Primary School's BoardofTrustees

has taken the bold step of using some of its operations budget to fund an extra fulltime teacher. This will mean a reduction in class sizes, which the board decided was necessary because of an increase in pupil numbers. The school's target roll for March is 293 but already they have this number of children enrolled, so the roll is once again expanding. Principal Ellen Gould said they were facing class sizes of around 35 children in the seniors and 30 in the juniors, but will now have around 30 in the seniors and 25 in the juniors. Mrs Gould said despite the apparent lack of ministry funding for staff, the school was actually very lucky, receiving much ministry funding for special needs. She said parents and teachers will have to face the consequences of the tightened budget to pay the extra salary. She said senior staff will have no release time, meaning all of their school time will be in their classes so they will have to carry out more of their work outside school time. Mrs Gould said she hoped

parents would see the benefit of the move and see to it that they paid their school fees (which go into the operations budget). The school also starts 1 995 with a full staff. Steven Snell, who has been longterm relieving in the past two years, takes up the deputy principal role. Catherine Pantling starts as a new Scale A teacher in one of the senior classrooms. She comes fully trained as a librarian, from Monrad School in Palmerston North. Robyn Olds, who recently stepped down as principal at Orautoha School, returns to Ohakune where she began her teaching career. Mrs Olds takes on the new extra class. Although she doesn't start immediately the new class will begin from the first day with a reliever, so as to avoid later disruption, said Mrs Gould. Korty Wilson returns to the school from Ruapehu College to work in the bilingual unit. Meri Pirere is the new kaiarahi reo, working between the school and the marae. The school is also "extremely fortunate" to have attracted more Maori lan-

guage funding and will have three people working throughout the school to enhance its Maori language

programmes. Staff development at Ohakune this year sees staff involved in the national de-

velopment of the English curriculum and maths curriculum, in the National Library's school library de-

velopment programme and in trialing a health and safety manual put out by Education Services Central.