"HELD UP."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 138, 10 July 1909, Page 6

"HELD UP."

SCHOOL COMMISSIONERS' DIFFICULTY. THE PUKEARUHE SCHOOL SITE. Departmental dealings are very precise just now, and the Department of Education is' upcoming the most precise of the Governmental departments, so far as correspondence with this disttict is concerned. The following correspondence, which came before the Board of School Commissioners yesterday morning, practically explains itself. Some time during May the Secretary for Education asked for a report upon the circumstances connected with the application of the Board's solicitor to transfer certain sections at Fnkcaruhc to the Tnranaki Education Board.

In reply, the secretary, Mr. F. P. ' Cork-ill, wrote that the existing school site at Pukenruhe was situated at the extreme end of that township and remote from the homes of the settlers who had school-going children. The Taranaki Education Board applied to have n more suitable site, and after several years of negotiation, the Commissioners succeeded in purchasing allotments 92 and 93, each containing an acre, and together forming a convenient site on which to erect a school. These allotments cost the Commissioners £ls each. The Commissioners were of ophion that in such a case as this they ought to receive from the Education Board, iby way of exchange, the school site which had proved unsuitable. There did not, however, appealr to be any method by which the Education Board could divest itself of a site except under section 6 of "The Education Reserves Act, 1908," and there was no provision for the Commissioners toeing party to any such exchange. The Secretary for Education replied on 14th June: .... The transaction ... is not one to which the Minister is prepared to consent. He does not consider it the function of the Commissioners to purchase land with the view of transferring it to the Board." Mr. Cbrkill answered this letter on the day of receipt to the effect that the intimation in the foregoing letter came as a great surprise, for ever since the School Commissioners were constituted in 1877 it had been the practice of the Board to purchase suitable pieces of land either as sites or as additions to existing sites upon request of the Education Board concerned, after the Commissioners had satisfied, themselves that the need was a real one and in the best interests of primary education in the locality. In nearly every annual statement of accounts for the last thirty years would be found the item, "purchases of school sites," and this was the first time such expenditure had been questioned, lie referred to the sections of the Act governing the reserves, and pointed out that the purchase of school sites had never been made out of revenue, but always out of funds' obtained and supplied in conformity with the present section 24 (and its predecessor 13 of 18S2). "If the Hon. Minister Ims been advised;," he concluded, "that the Commissioners had in anyway exceeded their powers in acting-as they have done, the Board will be grateful to have an indication for guidance In the future."

On 21st June the Secretary for Education wrote: "In reply to your letter of the 16th inst. I have the honor to advise you that the Education Reserves Act, 1877, was amended in ISJO7 for the express purpose of limiting a power which, in the opinion of the Government, the School Commissioners, in Taranaki at any rate, wore not using for the benefit of the trust. I name Taranaki because, as far as I am aware, the practice in question was not adopted elsewhere. That the purchase of school sites has never been made out of revenue does not afl'cet the argument, seeing that the express direction of the Act is that land so acquired is to be held 'for the same purposes as the land for which the moneys were received/"

Mr. Quiiliam, the Board's solicitor, quoted section 15 of the Education Reserves Act, which provided: "The School Commissioners in cadi district and every Board may from time to time appropriate or set' apart any of the reserves, or lands vested in ihem or it, or any portion or portions ihereof, as a site or sites 1 for public schools." This clause had been amended in 1907 by prefixing the words, "with the consent of the Governor-in-Coiincil." This was the first transaction in which the Minister's sanction had been necessary or asked. Practically, the Minister now said, "You can't do this without my consent, and I refuse my consent."

The chairman, Mr. James Wade, believed that this was the outcome of a lit of jealousy on the part of other Boards'. The Taranaki Board was the only one which had taken advantage of clause 15, and had reaped a benefit from it that had not been obtained by other Boards. He suggested that as he would have to go to Wellington on departmental .business soon, he should see the Minister upon this matter. Mr. Faull thought it "a bit rough" for the Minister to "jump on the Board" like this. It seemed to him that the Board was to be bound hand and foot. Mr. Jennings said the members must remember that although the Board had merely been carrying out the provisions of the Act, its dealings bad not given unanimous satisfaction in some districts, say, at Tariki and Tongaporutu. He knew the Minister had something in '.lis mind about Tongaporutu which doubtless inspired his' present attitude. The chairman said it seemed that the Minister was rolling the Board of a power which had been used to facilitate greatly the administration of primary I education.

In answer to Mr. Faull, Mr. Quiiliam stated that he had never dreamed that this consent would he refused, knowing that the action was likely to prove so beneficial. He could not understand what the Secretary of Education meant when he said that it was' not part of the functions of the Hoard to provide school sites.

Mr. Major thought it useless to go on discussing the matter, and moved that Messrs. Wade and Jennings wait upon the Minister in Wellington concerning the point in dispute. This motion was' unanimously carried.