OLD NEWTOWN SCHOOL

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 45, 21 August 1941, Page 6

OLD NEWTOWN SCHOOL

USE AS HOSPITAL

BOARD ENDORSES COMPLAINT

A committee consisting of the chairman (Mr. W. V. Dyer) and city members of the Wellington Education Board, together with two members of the Newtown School Committee, is to endeavour to have some finality reached in regard to the evacuation of the old Newtown School by the hospital authorities, with a view to having the school grounds and general environment put in a proper condition.

This . decision was reached by the board at a meeting yesterday and followed the receipt of a letter from the Newtown School Committee complaining of the state of the grounds and conditions at the school. Mr. L. J. McDonald said that the conditions at the school were worse than deplorable. In relation to school population Newtown had the smallest playing area of any school in the Dominion and yet that ground was being occupied by the hospital authorities, .thus depriving the children of even * minimum playground facilities. The position had dragged on for two years, and the whple place was becoming an eyesore. The hospital authorities claimed that, they had nowhere else to put patients, but it was only an accident that .the old school was not pulled down before the hospital puthorities required it. In that case, thuv would have had to find somewhere else Tor the patients.