To the Otago Education Board.

Otago Witness, Issue 2086, 15 February 1894, Page 21

To the Otago Education Board.

(Per favour of the Otago Daily Times and Witness.)

We, the objectors to the Ngapara new school site, earnestly ask the members of the Otago Education Board to duly consider the medical evidence we have forwarded them, and in addition to consider where the children are to get water from when the school is placed on the now site. Their chairman, Mr Donald Borrie, has stated that they will get it from the school tanks ; but Ngapara schoolboys could tell Mr Borrie that this source has failed in the past ; we may therefore conclude that it will fail in the future. Then the children must drink the creek water, the drinking of which water medical authorities state has caused serious illness, if not death, at Ngapara. We ask the board, in this all-important question to our children, not to be influenced by their chairman, who has shown that he is not competent to advise them on this matter, by making the following statements to a deputation from the objectors : (1) That a swamp can be healthy on or near a school site ; (2) taut the children can be relied on to drink only the tank water, when the poisonous swamp water is flowing through their playground ; (3) that the majority of the Ngapara residents are in favour of the new site, an utter misstatement, as we are prepared to prove, or forfeit £40 to the Oamaru Hospital ; (4) that he considers what he calls "his common-sense view" of more value as to the healthiness of the site than the report of medical experts ; (5) that the opposition to the new sibe was not got up in the interest of the children, but was a mere "hue and cry" for tha furtherance of private interest. This last statement is a direct inßult to all who have opposed the site, is utterly without foundation, and is most improper for anyone in Mr Borrie's position to make. — We are, yours respectfully, Tim Ngapara Objectors to the New Site. Per Robert Paulin. Ngapara, February 13.