The Ministry of Education appears to be forcing the north Dunedin school to reduce its roll from 460 pupils to 350, by way of demolishing nine classrooms and funding the replacement of only four of them.
The cut in teaching spaces was deemed necessary because funding for the replacement classrooms would be based on the number of pupils living within the school’s enrolment zone.
The zone predominantly includes student accommodation, motels, Woodhaugh Gardens, the University of Otago, Logan Park fields, the University Oval and a lot of uninhabited land both up Leith Valley and the Northern Motorway.
So only 103 of the school’s 460 pupils are from within the school zone, meaning funding is limited.
The ministry has given the board the option to relinquish the junior site (on the east side of George St) and have all pupils housed on the main site (on the west side of George St).
However, that would leave very little recreation space for pupils.
The ministry also gave the option to keep the junior site and put the four new teaching spaces there, but there would be no funding for a staff room, resource room or sick bay on the junior site.
The board said a staffroom on the junior site was needed for health and safety purposes, to ensure enough adults were on site during break times.
The ministry has told the board it will need to reduce its roll to 350 because it is not possible to increase the number of teaching spaces.
"It is based on a formula generated by the number of in-zone students."
The school’s board of trustees held a community meeting last week to gather parents’ views on the ministry’s proposals.
A parent at the meeting, who declined to be named, said about 80 people attended.
"Whilst I wouldn’t call the overall tone angry, there was broad agreement that the Ministry of Education’s plan was not serving the school, students, or the community well, and they were being unnecessarily inflexible and opaque in their decision-making.
"From the account given by board members, it seems that trying to negotiate or strike a balance with the ministry was like talking to a wall.
"Reading between the lines, one might get the impression that the ministry is trying hard to force a decision, whereby the school loses control of the land on the eastern side of George St where the juniors currently are."
He said another parent believed the school was being "punished for its success".
By running the school in a way that made it attractive for out-of-zone pupils to join, the ministry was intentionally reducing the ability for that to continue.
He said another parent believed the ministry had a habit of reducing schools’ footprints under the guise of upgrades.
"Though the spaces were no longer fit for purpose, the school was ‘over code’ in terms of teaching spaces and the rooms would not be rebuilt."
He said there would be another school board of trustees meeting later this month.
"As for what will happen next, there will be parental pushback, but likely only after the next school board meeting.
"Having the government in limbo with regards to who to contact — MPs, the education minister — is going to slow things down a bit too."
