Enjoying the school of hard knocks
Running Pomare School could be seen as the toughest gig in town but Cilla Scott reckons she has the perfect job. The decile one Lower Hutt school has a falling roll, suffers from white flight and is in a Mongrel Mob stronghold. Earlier this year Pomare advertised for a temporary acting principal. There were no takers.
For Scott, however, all that is irrelevant and although being the new principal has it challenges, she gets up every morning looking forward to going to work.
Rather than seeing a problem with a roll of 70 (it has fallen from more than 300 in the 1990s) and a decadeslong battle with white flight, Scott sees positives.
Community support was strong and the perception that gang kids did not want to learn and were a problem was just wrong, she said. Their parents understood the importance of education and, just like parents at a decile 10 school, they wanted to see their child get a good education.
Scott taught at Pomare during the 1990s before teaching at several schools in Wellington. Her first stint was as a relieving teacher and the kids made an impression on her that she never forgot.
She had just finished a spell of relieving at a high decile school where she was ignored by the pupils and staff. The reception at Pomare could not have been more different.
‘‘One of the kids came up and said ‘are you going to be a nice teacher?’. The principal said ‘I hope you don’t mind being hugged, that is the way the kids are’.’’
Growing up in a religious family in Otaki, her father taught her the value of public service and he continued to be her motivation.
She initially trained as a social worker before moving into teaching.
Working with gang members did not bother her. ‘‘It is not scary to me
. . . they are only flesh and blood and all they want is the best for their children.’’
Gang patches was one issue she has had and she said it was not as straightforward as it may seem
She wanted parents to feel engaged in the school and participate in things like camps and sport. Excluding a parent just because he was a gang member was unfair on their children. The delicate issue of
Cilla Scott
Pomare School principal
enforcing the ban on patches was dealt with by talking to a female with links to a senior gang member.
The school has five Pa¯ keha¯ students, 29 Pasifika, 28 Ma¯ ori and nine other nationalities, including Kiribati, Columbia, Zimbabwe, India and Cambodia.
Having students from such with a wide range of backgrounds was part of the charm of the school, she said.
Her challenge is to grow the roll and get children in a new subdivision on a former Housing New Zealand site to attend the school.
She was frustrated residents in the subdivision did not support Pomare and she had door-knocked, asking them to give the school a go.
When looking at a school such as Pomare, she said people needed to look past the colour of the students.
The problem Pomare residents faced was poverty – devastating for all nationalities. She was determined to lift kids out of poverty by providing the best possible education.
‘‘They are only flesh and blood and all they want is the best for their children.’’