The school had a good start to the year by avoiding a drop in its roll, allowing it to hire two teachers, she said.
A renewed application process for the position of rector drew ‘‘a good field'' of applicants for the top job, and six applications were received by the end of last week for its vacant hostel manager position.
However, the Ministry of Education might not be satisfied a new board of trustees could be elected to take back governance before the end of the fourth term.
Earlier this year, she said she hoped her intervention would last only two years in total.‘‘Personally, that would be fantastic. That would be a really fast turnaround,'' she said this week.
‘‘It would be great, but we need to make sure that we prepare parents, who are interested, well, so that they fully understand what the role entails and then have a great selection available for the election process.
‘‘There's a wee bit of work to do, particularly that promotion and education side of it before we get the go ahead to hold an election.''
Ms Hornsey, an employment and resource management lawyer from Tekapo, was appointed commissioner in October 2014 under a statutory intervention by the ministry after the school's board of trustees stood down.
That followed concerns about pastoral care, communications and public relations, governance good practice and employment issues at the school.
When Ms Hornsey took on the role of commissioner, 26 staff, including 12 full-time teachers, had left the school over about three years.
Late last year, three more teachers put their hands up to have their positions disestablished after a ministry roll estimate predicted a 12.5% drop from 474 pupils to 415, the school's provisional staffing entitlement would have reduced from 36.4 to 32.8.
But the predicted roll drop did not happen.
Acting rector Clive Rennie, former Otago Boys' High School rector, ‘‘conservatively'' made two appointments early this year, before he filed the roll return on March 1.
On March 1, the roll was 470 at the school and a full-time English teacher and a full-time science and maths teacher would begin before the end of the term.
The staffing entitlement might allow for additional staff to be employed, but for the time being the school had filled positions in ‘‘areas that we know we need to cover'', Mr Rennie said.
The school had also picked up some teaching hours due to an increase in special needs pupils, Mr Rennie said.
Ms Hornsey said a shortlist for the rector's position was drawn up this week and interviews were scheduled to begin the week of March 21.
In her view, the position should be filled in the third term, but the start date would be negotiated with the successful candidate, she said.
She did not indicate when a new hostel manager would start, but said acting hostel manager Ross Ovens was ‘‘doing a great job of holding the fort''.
As with the rector's position, she would not be rushed into filling the position hastily.hamish.maclean@odt.co.nz
