FINE ARTS DEADLOCK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 186, 8 August 1935, Page 6

FINE ARTS DEADLOCK.

GRAMMAR SCHOOL BOARD'S POSITION.

(To the Editor.)

As a Grammar School old boy, a Uuivcrsity graduate and a citizen, I would like to make a few comments on the attitude of the Grammar School Board ' towards the proposal to use the old Grammar School site in Symonda Street for a iine arts block. I should think I am able to see this question from all sides, as unfortunately the board is not. If I thought the stand taken by the .board would bring one tittle of gain to the good old school and its younger offspring, I would admire its attitude, but can the chairman or any mother member show me and other old boys how the Grammar Schools will 'benefit if the present scheme for an arts bloek is knocked on the head? The .board wants more revenue. But what for? To put into the Government's central pool? For that is where it would go. Most people may not know it, but the position is that the more the 'board raises from endowments the less it gets from the Government towards the payment of salaries, and if the income from its .properties were large enough the Government would 'be relieved entirely. Who, then, would be the gainer? It would not be the board, but the Government. That is why I cannot understand the board's determination against all considerations of community interest, to squeeze more money from its endowment lands. I should think the Minister of Education is equally perplexed, and who can wonder at the feelings of the City Council and the University College authorities after this display of the board's blindness? Unfortunately the 'board lives in the past; the changes of the last generation have moved too fast for it. As a trustee it clings vainly to the shadow of powers which it has long since lost, and now it is doing its best to kill public sympathy 'by blocking a scheme which the more farseeing section of the public has much at heart. Let all educational interests in Auckland come together and there will be some real progress. If they stand apart and pull against one another we shall get nowhere, and the university will continue to starve for lack of public support. GRAMMAR OLD BOY.