South Canterbury Times, THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 1882.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2741, 5 January 1882, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, THURSDAY, JANUARY 5, 1882.

The South Canterbury Board of Education is a most unfortunate body. They are continually involving themselves in difficulties of one kind or other, and in consequence have been the “ best abused ” of all our local bodies. The latest trouble they have brought upon themselves is by performing the simple operation of “ reckoning without their host.” They undertook to build half a dozen schools in country districts, and allocated a sum of £2OO each for the purpose. Plans were prepared and tenders were called for, and the lowest tender was considerably in excess of the sumallocated. Each of the Committees of the half dozen districts interested of course consider the promise to provide them with a school sacred, and would be fearfully incensed if they were thrown over in favor of the rest, —at any rate the Board proceed on this assumption, and no member has dared to suggest that any one district should be asked to wait until more funds are available. The consequence is that an effort is made to cut down the plans, and still the plans, and still the cost remains above the amount fixed to be given by the Board. And here crops up another fix the Board have placed themselves in, one of a kind they were continually preparing for themselves. They are perpetually “ laying down a principle ” that nine times out of ten is no principle at all, or that is not worth the laying down. They laid it down that the school buildings to be erected in the districts alluded to, ought not to cost more than £2OO each, because they could not afford, after making certain allocations to be alluded to presently, to expend more upon them; but they cannot get them built for that money, and so the whole thing is almost at a dead-lcck. Some of the Committees have undertaken to make up the difference between the sum granted and the actual cost, and possibly—not certainly—these Committees may get their schools erected. Other Committees say that they cannot raise the difference, and the presumption is that they will have to wait until the Board gets a further grant next year; until the price of labor and material suffers a considerable diminution, or until the Board decides —as, by the way, they have had to do before—to break through a “principle.” When the last grant for building purposes was received from Govern-

ment £SOO was set aside for the erection of new buildings at Waimate and a similar sum for new buildings at Temuka. In neither case was the sum half enough for the purpose in view, and it was merely set aside to be kept ns a nest egg until other amounts could be obtained to enable the building to be proceeded With. At yesterday’s meeting of the Board it was resolved to erase the “earmark” from the £SOO set aside for new buildings at Waimate, so that the money could be used for other purposes, but nothing was said about using it, or any portion of it, to increase the allocations for the county schools, now proved to be insufficient. It would not do for any member of the Board to suggest such a thing. The “ principle bad been affirmed ” that these country schoolrooms should not cost more than £2OO a-piece ; and notwithstanding that they cannot be built for that sum in the present state of the building trade, no more shall be spent upon them. This rule is apparently, as fixed and unalterable as the laws of the Medea and Persians. And yet not quite. A concession to the extent of a £lO note has been made in favor of one Committee—the Committee of the district of Seaview —in consideration of the extreme liberality of their offers of assistance in providing a school for the district. This adherence to rules laid down by themselves, generally without due reference to circumstances, may be said to be the bane of the Board’s existence. Its evil effects are perceptible in the most trifling matters. Buildings are proposed to he erected according.to plans prepared without reference to local conditions ; in places where fierce nor’westers vibrate the neighboring mountains, walls and ceilings are lined with plaster, that of course continually cracks and falls through the shaking of the buildings ; and where easily worked stone can be got for next to nothing, and quite handy, concrete foundations are stipulated for, though cement has to be carted many miles at a great expense. An extreme instance of this “rule of thumb” kind of management is the providing in the plans and specifications for the erection of a coal shed atone of the schools (as with the rest) which is to be erected in the centre ot a bush district, where wood, and not coal, would certainly be the fuel used, and for which no shed is required.