WELLINGTON EDUCATION BOARD MEETS.

Shannon News, 22 December 1925, Page 2

WELLINGTON EDUCATION BOARD MEETS.

HOLIDAYS FOR 1926. A meeting of the' Education Board was held on Wednesday. The following members were present:—Messrs T, Forsyth (chairman), D. McCalluin, 0. I. Harkness, L. H. Atkins, T. Moss, J. Stonehouse, W. E. Howe, R. McLeod, E. H. Penny, R. A. Wright, M.P., and J. J. Clarke. The financial statement showed that the receipts from January Ist to November 30th totalled £326,929, plus £5949 credit balance on January Ist, 1925. Payments from January Ist to November 30th amounted to £331.025. The total sum in the deposits account was £9384. The Education Department notified that it had approved of grants for furniture for a portable class-room at Lyall Bay; one-third the cost of installing electric light in schools and residences; renting a hall at Otaki until end of year; additions to the school at Silverstream; new desks at Mount Cook; the erection of a school building at Awatoitoi; a school residence at Pirinoa; a side school at Trentham, and cloakrooms at the Blenheim infant school.

An honorarium of £65 per annum for th'o Board's chairman has been approved by tbe Minister of Education. The Director of Education approved of the school holidays proposed for 1926 and regretted that so much misunderstanding with the Department’s suggested dates for terms and vacations existed that the proposal had been withdrawn. The Board’s proposals-were:— First term, Monday, February Ist, to Friday, May 14th; second term, Mon-; day, May 21st, to Friday, August 30th; third term, Monday, September 6th, to Friday, December 17th. Summer vacation, December 18th, 1926, to January 31st, 1927; Easter holidays, Good Friday, April 2; Easter Monday, April sth, and Tuesday, April Gth. It was decided to bring the question of. the syncronisation of holidays before the next Education Board conference. The Blenheim School Committee asked that, permission be given to make the school hours during February from 8.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. The practice in Auckland is that when the temperature is high, the headmaster, after consulting with the chairman of the school committee, is authorised to curtail school hours to two hours in th'e morning and two in the afternoon. It was decided to agree to some modification of school hpurs, subject to the consent of the Department.

On the motion of the chairman the following paragraph was added to bylaw No. 60: —“That in all cases of the closing of a school or of the status of a school being reduced below Grade 1, the school committee, commissioners, or correspondent of such school, as the case may be, shall immediately forward to the Board the' school funds then in hand. Such funds shall be hold in trust by the Board on account of each school concerned for a- period of at least two years or until such time as the school is re-established in Grade 1 or a higher grade, which ever period is the shorter.’’ ' ’