Editorial: Empty school a bad exercise

OPINION: When it comes to pointless facilities, the jokes revolve around the proverbial pub with no beer.

But the Education Ministry has come up with its own version in the form of the school with no students - with Tokoroa East Primary School our own example. The school has a principal and two other staff members but little else after its board of trustees and principal Jackie Meha asked the Ministry last year to approve a voluntary closure.

Despite being the oldest remaining school in town, Tokoroa East was up against it with a falling roll and steadily mounting debt.

Tokoroa is a town laden with infrastructure that is a legacy of its once booming past and a potential shackle for the future. As planners tipped the population to reach city status they rushed to build everything from schools to roads to cater for a possible 20,000 residents.

The result today is a town of ten schools, including an intermediate and two high schools catering for a smaller number of children. As an example Forest View High School sits just outside the urban area that never quite grew to reach it as mill layoffs took their toll on the timber town. Tokoroa East School parents saw the writing on the wall and took their children elsewhere this year, leaving the Ministry to hand out notice to staff and essentially lock the place up until staff contracts allowed a closure.

No one would expect teachers to be tipped out on their ears without warning or recompense. But taxpayers have the right to ask whether better planning might have avoided the scenario of preparing the school for a new year only to discover there were no pupils. Belated efforts by a small number of parents to keep the school open may be partially to blame for committing the Ministry to an extra term of school maintenance and wages. It is a poor use of funds at a time when the government is looking to trim $25 million from the Ministry.Another point worth noting in the sorry demise of this once proud school is a lack of information on what exactly the staff are doing for their stipend in the meantime. Ms Meha did not return calls from the Times and was not there when the paper visited.

There are two other schools, both in Dunedin, about to be closed in similar circumstances. But the contrast with one of them, Tomahawk School, is glaring. The student-less principal there, Richard Aitken, was up-front about his bemusement at having little to occupy his time.

He had enrolled in university papers in the meantime but was realistic that the taxpayer would be well within their rights to ask him to teach elsewhere.In the absence of any further indication from the Ministry or staff, let's hope the Mr Aitken's Waikato colleagues are making similarly good use of their time.

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