Taihape Area School is getting a rebuild. a decade after flaws were exposed.
Photo: Google Maps
But that won t begin until next year, a decade after Taihape Area School s myriad flaws were exposed, and in the meantime it faces whopping power bills to keep its classrooms healthy.
Its former board of trustees chair blames official incompetence, and fears that the rebuild on proven less-than-stable land won t go well.
But the school says its existing site is OK, its existing classrooms are healthy - which the Ministry of Education echoes - and that the rebuild will be fantastic .
More than 250 children who attend years 1 to 13 at the 60 percent Māori school, face another winter in spaces described like this in official reports that have ping-ponged back and forth since 2014.
Taihape Area School gets rebuild a decade after flaw identified
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Taihape Area School gets rebuild a decade after flaw identified
nzherald.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nzherald.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Principal Toni Burnside says there is lots of excitement around the new building. Construction is expected to take 16 months and will include a hall, which the school’s current site does not have, along with four teaching pods, an administration block, and a library. The new school will be called Pareawa Banks Avenue School. Pareawa means “adorn the banks of the river”. About 100 students, staff, parents and former pupils attended a symbolic sod turning service on Thursday to mark the start of the development. Principal Toni Burnside said it was an important milestone for the school. “We should have been in our new school in 2017, so we ve got photos of the children who should have been here,” she said.