Board chairman urges big redevelopment for school
With Hutt Valley High School’s mould-riddled C Block slated for demolition, the school’s board chairman says a much wider redevelopment is needed to avoid history being repeated.
In March, several classrooms in the school’s C Block were evacuated and sealed off after unsafe levels of black mould were detected. Following more testing, 13 learning spaces and a dance studio were closed, which has forced senior students to work from home when term two started this week.
After a month of outrage and claims it failed to act, the Ministry of Education announced last week it intended to demolish the problematic building, but the school’s chairman of the board of trustees, Hamish Bowen, says other parts of the school such as the E and M Blocks also needed to go.
‘‘It’s easy to fixate on C Block as the only problem, but it goes wider than that. Other buildings built around the same time have the same problems.’’
Bowen and two former board heads Janine Foster and Peter Stephens will meet Education Minister Chris Hipkins today to talk about the school’s issues before a public meeting on May 6.
He said the ministry’s shortand medium-term responses to the problems had been good but wanted to ensure the school’s future was not being forgotten.
Bowen said there was no point in fixing only C Block if they were going to have to deal with the same problems in a different building later on. He intended on raising the point with Hipkins.
Hutt High’s acting principal Denise Johnson agreed. She identified E and M Blocks and some prefab buildings as being of concern.
Hipkins was approached for comment, but Stuff was directed to the Ministry of Education.
Head of education infrastructure service Kim Shannon said the ministry was working with the school to prioritise what work needed to be done across the campus, which included the demolition of C Block.
Johnson said meetings with the ministry were planned for the next week. She was hopeful the school’s Campus of the Future report from 2016 would guide redevelopment at the school.
Luke Thompson, 16, was one of the year 12 pupils who was learning from home yesterday. While the first day went smoothly, he was concerned about the effectiveness of learning through video meetings.
He thought personal interaction with his teachers and classmates was an important part of the learning experience which was missing.
Senior students have planned to protest the Ministry of Education’s ‘‘inaction’’ over the school’s problem buildings outside Parliament on May 6.
An email from the Year 13 Leaders group invited year 12 and 13 students, and their teachers, to the demonstration.
Johnson said the school was aware of the protest and that students did not need the school’s blessing to attend.