NEW SITE FOR LITTLE RIVER SCHOOL

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume LXIV, Issue 6578, 20 October 1939, Page 3

NEW SITE FOR LITTLE RIVER SCHOOL

DOMAIN SITE CHOSEN

The largest meeting for many years in: connection with School matters in the Little River District was held at the Triangle Kail on Tuesday evening last. The meeting was called by the. Education Board by advertisement for the purpose of holding a ballot to choose a local site for the new primary school. The keenest intereest was displayed, the meeting being thoroughly representative of all interests concerned. Messrs C. S. Thompson (chairman) and W. P. Spencer represented the Education Board. '

Mr H. L. Lewthwaite moved that the new school be built on the section adjoining the Awa Iti Domain and the Offices of the-Wairewa County Council An amendment moved by Mr F. G. Stanbury was to effect that the new School be rebuilt on the old site. A further amendment moved by Mrs M. E. Johnson was in favour of a site at Wright's correr at the junction of Western Valley and Church Roads. After the various proposals had been discussed, scrutineers were appointed and' a secret ballot taken the result being:— Domain site .. .. 66 votes Wright's Corner .. 29 votes Old site 27 votes

The Chairman said that the plans for the new school had been forwarded to Wellington, and it should not be long before the building was commenced. It would be an open air school built with a view to future consolidation.

The new chool will be the third public school to be erected in Little River. The first was built on the site now occupied by the Catholic Church nearly seventy years ago, and the school-house built at the same time is still occupied. After supplying the educational needs of the District for about eight years a move was made to the present site at Cooptown, as the population had then lately settled around a mill established in that locality by the late Mr W. Coop. This was some years before the railway reached Little River.

About twenty nine years ago, the old "Side" school half way up the Coach Road was shifted to the present Puaha School site and enlarged. The Little River School which was recently destroyed by fire, and the Puaha School were then less than two miles apart and toward one end of the Valley, and this has been the position for upwards of twenty nine years.

The voting shows decisively that the feeling of the meeting was that the time had now come for the school to be brought nearer to the Little River Township. The Board's representatives who handled the meeting very fairly and efficiently were thanked by Mr S. Lc Compte, Chairman of ihe School Committee.