Mould and other issues have closed classrooms at Hutt Valley High School.
Photo: Supplied
Lucy, her last name withheld, a senior student at Hutt Valley High, blames the government. I have been let down, she said at a meeting in the school hall earlier this month which families called to seek answers from the Ministry of Education.
Lucy had just spent the first three days of term two working from home because her classrooms are a health risk. Help has come too late. It is horrendously overdue, she added.
Hutt Valley High s problems are national news. Labour MP Ginny Andersen of Hutt South is using it as an example of chronic underfunding of schools. This is made worse, others say, by a property funding model that confuses the responsibilities of tenants (school boards) and owner (the ministry).
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Hutt Valley High School students protest the closure of some of their classrooms due to toxic mould and damp by setting up a classroom on the Parliament front lawn.
Students shut out of their classrooms because of toxic mould say the problem is a symptom of chronic underfunding for the upkeep of public schools. About 350 Year 12 and 13 pupils at Hutt Valley High School have had to do half their weekly learning at home since Monday after unsafe levels of black mould was discovered in 13 learnings spaces and a dance studio earlier this year. At a meeting held in the school hall on Thursday night to update the community on how the school and the Ministry of Education planned to respond to the situation, deputy head student Lucy Rodger said while she was happy to see progress, the commitment by the ministry to demolish and rebuild C block was “horrendously and frustratingly overdue”.
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