It takes a village to bring up one child
Six-year-old Cruiz Strickett is one special kid. They say it takes a village to bring up a child – and that’s exactly what’s happening in the small semi-rural farming neighbourhood of Linton.
Not much had gone right at Linton Country School. Declining living conditions in the area saw the Manawatu school plunge down the decile rankings. Last year, the Ministry of Education sent in a statutory manager to take control of the board. Principal Bill Kaandorp stood down due to ill health, then resigned. And for good measure, the school hall suffered a severe fire in October.
The community might have been forgiven for turning their back on the school. Some did.
At the end of the last year there were 12 pupils, who headed off to their summer holidays under the cloud of a series of crisis meetings about the school’s future. Some went off to high school. Some moved to other schools.
On Wednesday this week, one will return. That’s Cruiz.
Cruiz is the sixth generation of his family to go to Linton Country School. But after 127 years serving the district, the school came oh-so-close to closing at Christmas. The statutory manager, Laura Snowden, challenged the community: You want to keep your school? Well, step up.
And they did. Cruiz’s dad, Aaron Strickett, fixed the sandpit, tidied up the gardens, cleaned the drains and put up bright yellow school signs. Tash Baker and other preschool mums swung in too.
They fought. And the Ministry of Education agreed to let them keep the school open – at least, for now.
Because there is, of course, a question of real public interest here: should the taxpayer continue bank-rolling a school that has just one child on the roll? The school will get $158,000 in salaries and operations funding this year – you could put Cruiz through a degree at an Ivy League university for that kind of money.
Ultimately it serves neither the public purse, the community, nor Cruiz himself to continue propping up a failing school.
That is the ultimate answer. But the immediate answer is a resounding ‘‘yes’’. The Ministry of Education has rightly given the school and its community a chance (probably a last chance) to prove themselves.
School rolls go up. School rolls go down. But communities endure.
Once you’ve shut down a school, it’s hard to open it again. The graffitied, burned-out husks of closed schools around New Zealand is evidence of that.
And a good school isn’t just an educational provider – it is the heart of a community.
The people of Linton have shown us that.