The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1915. HIGH SCHOOL BUILDING PROGRAMME.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 December 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1915. HIGH SCHOOL BUILDING PROGRAMME.

At Monday's meeting of the New Plymouth High School Board the question of the building programme was discussed at some length, but no final decision was arrived at. The Board is faced with more than one serious problem, and there appears to be a divergence of opinion on matters of vital importance. It will be noted that the Director of Education has intimated that tho Government prefers the Board should finance its new buildings out of borrowed money instead of receiving the promised grant of £2OOO for the Girls' High School, and is prepared to obtain the necessary authority for the Board to borrow £SOOO above the £2OOO sanctioned by the Order-in-Council in Septembex-, 1914, £3OOO of this amount to bo in respect of the £3OOO which the Public Trustee received authority to lend in September, 1915, and the remaining £2OOO to represent the Government's promised grant. If the Government will (as they are morally bound so to do) pay the interest on the £2OOO and agree to provide that sura when in a position to do so, there is little doubt that the Board would, accept the compromise and thus put an end to a most unsatisfactory state of affairs, but, as the chairman pointed out, it would be unfair to expect the Board to pay interest and lose the present Government grant for rent as well. The Board in pressing this matter on the Government is only acting in a manner befitting trustees of public institutions, aud the Government can hardly do otherwise than give the required undertakings. Assuming that this problem is solved the Board will have to face a much greater difficulty in deciding on its building programme, and it is in this connection that, unless a determined policy is adopted, some compromise fatal to the best interests of the schools may be arrived at, and trouble caused that may have most serious results. ' The building requirements consist of a Girls' School, a girls' boardinghouse, and a boys' boardinghouse, the total cost of the programme amounting to (roughly) -ei5,000, exclßsfre-oi-Architect! fm aad

extras wlucl), for the sake of ar«uiueut, way be set down as £IOOO. To meet tliis the Board has in hand and to coax £11,500, or little more than enough to carry out the buildings required for the girls school aud boardingheuse. Tlio price of the lowest tender for the Girln' School is £5117; the lowest teuder f«r the boys' boardinghouse is £5287, and it is estimated that the girls' boardinghouse will cost £4OOO, These prices are for concrete structures with tiled roofs, but if the Board were to entertain such an unthinkable proposal as wooden structures the total coat would be reduced to £11,381, which would leave the Board only about a thousand pounds to find beyond its available resources. Apparently the members of the Board seem to be strongly in favor of concrete buildings, and from that attitude they should not swerve a hair's breadth. It would be nothing but criminal folly to adopt wood because its first cost is less, and it would certainly deter all rightminded parents from allswlsg their children to be subjected to such an unjustified rink in case of Are. Faced with this deficiency of finance to erect the whole of the required buildings i* concrete, the Board will, apparently, have no easy task in deciding on its course of action. At the meeting on Monday night there was a foretaste of that divergent of opinion which was probably inevitable, s the crucial point being whether the girls or the boys were to receive priority in the building scheme. *.' i;e case which Mr. Eraser presented in favor of the girls claim for consideration in the matter of both school and boardinghouse was certainly an exceptionally strong one. He pointed out that the Board had already spent £IO,OOO on improvements at the Boys' School, and were proposing to spend a further £SOOO, while they had spent nothing on buildings f or the girls, yet the latter vjfre just as ißuch entitled to proper bii'ldings as the boys, the Board being trustees for the children of Taranaki mid not for the boys alone. It is certi inly high time that the High School girls should be properly housed both in school and as boarders. In their case the need for both boardinghouse and school is of more importance than in the caße of the boys, though numerically the students are less than the boys. It may be that the reason for this difference in numbers may, to some extent, be due to the primitive and temporary rature of the buildings provided for them by the Board. The Board may iviii consider this matter seriously befrre the special meeting on Monday n» t. It would be contrary to all reason to build a Girls' School without a boardinghouse attached thereto. Urgent as is the boys' boardinghouse, that of th* girls is still more so, and it would be an act of justice, as well as a commendable to place the Girls' High School on tie footing that it should occupy.