Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1942. LANSDOWNE SCHOOL PROTEST.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 February 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1942. LANSDOWNE SCHOOL PROTEST.

AMPLE justification appears to exist for the decision of the Lansdowne School Committee to call a meeting of district residents and parents to protest against, taking over of the school as an emergency hospital, unless in an emergency caused by enemy action. It is certainly only right that, the position should be def >ed clearly and that the authorities concerned should be required to justify their proposed action with reference to the Lansdowne School. It has been slated, somewhat vaguely, that the school would be taken over as an hospital only in an emergency. What precisely that means is left largely to the imagination, but it is proposed to proceed at once with the erection at the school, at a cost of £1,200, of an annexe which would be useless for anything else than hospital purposes. Not unreasonably this proposal is regarded as a menace to the undisturbed existence of the school. IL the establishment, with the projected annexe, is unlikely to be taken over as an hospital, the proposed expenditure on the annexe would appear to be rather wasteful. The fact, that so large an expenditure is contemplated suggests that the faking over of (he school is regarded as by no means a remote contingency.

Tn these limes the actual defence needs of the country in their broadest scope, including the provision of hospital accommodation needed or likely to be needed by our troops, of course must be met and satisfied as speedily and as completely as possible. It does not by any means follow, however, that any method of satisfying these needs that may be suggested or proposed must as a matter of course be justified. On the contrary, in the present iusiance, even a tentative and conditional proposal to convert a school into an hospital should be'Vetoed unless it can be shown conclusively that there is no practicable and satisfactory alternative-method of meeting hospital requirements.

An unbroken continuity of school life is of the utmost importance to children and before the people of Lansdowne consent, to their children being possibly deprived of their only available school—it is held by the committee that no alternative and adequate accommodation for school purposes is available in the Lansdowne area —(hey have every right to demand that the practicability of meeting emergency hospital requirements in some other way shall be examined exhaustively. Some, alternative possibilities have been mentioned, amongst them the erection of temporary hospital buildings.

The meeting to be held in Lansdowne next Tuesday evening should serve an excellent purpose if it leads to the whole question being examined and dealt with on its total merits and with full regard to the interests and welfare of the school children concerned. It has Io be considered, incidentally, that in war time some of our schools may be called upon to cater as schools for a larger population of children. In the event, for instance, of of school children from metropolitan or other areas, schools in districts like Lansdowne might be used for the accommodation and instruction of much larger numbers of children than at present, under a system of shifts or in other Whys.