WRONG PEOPLE BLAMED

Southland Times, Issue 25240, 18 December 1943, Page 5

WRONG PEOPLE BLAMED

GLENORCHY SCHOOL DISPUTE “The people of Glenorchy have misunderstood the position, to put it mildly. They are blaming the wrong people for the suspension of the new school building,” stated Mr S. Rice, chairman of the Southland Education Board, at the meeting of the board yesterday. Mr Rice was referring to a resolution carried, at a public meeting at Glenorchy last Saturday by which parents present agreed to Withhold their children from attending the school until such time as a suitable school building was provided.

Mr Rice said that the board had acted on instructions from the Director of Education. A grant was made for the school, but then the Cabinet decided that as the scheelite mines were petering out, it would be advisable to postpone the erection of the building until the position was clarified. The people of Glenorchy should have known that the board would not hold up the building after the department had made a grant. Instead of realizing this the people of Glenorchy had raised a great dust over the whole matter. He thought that the department had adopted a reasonable attitude in withholding the grant in the meantime in view of the possibility of the mine closing down. To have erected a new building would, in the circumstances, have been a waste of public money.

Mr W. Excell said that there was accommodation at the Glenorchy school for 30 children and there were not that number of children at present. The present school had been moved to a new site at the request of the residents and a porch added. Now the residents wanted a new school. A letter was received from Mr A. F. Sutherland, a former secretary of the Glenorchy School Committee, objecting to the method of instituting a “strike.”

A letter from another resident of Glenorchy, Mr J. H. Forbes, stated that right- thinking people had no sympathy with the strike method. The school committee, which was mostly comprised of State miners, was boasting about “putting the board in its place.” Mr Rice: The people of Glenorchy are only .doing harm to their own children and they seem to me to be acting very foolishly indeed.