Peter said the school's troubles were caused largely because it couldn't handle self-management and there was division between the principal, teachers and board of trustees.
Faced with a massively falling role where Gisborne Intermediate picked up the excess and they went from 480 to 600, he was given the rest of the term to make a positive impact and turn things around.
“After I started a lot of teachers bailed — it was rats off a sinking ship and the downside of this was that we had to replace them.”
So he was a man with a mission and only a term to complete it.
“Kevin and I would meet every morning at 6am and plan out the day. It was good fun but it was full on.
“In 1995 I was asked to stay on for one more term and at the end of Term 1 Kevin believed the school was in good enough heart to form a board of trustees so he did that by March 1995.
“We had an excellent board and I approached a highly-respected educationalist Arapeta Gibson to become the chair which he did.”
Peter then applied for the full-time principal's position and got it and has been making his mark on the school ever since.
Peter has strived to create a school environment where students thrive and the school connects and makes a difference for not only the students but the whanau.
“It is a great feeling when the community believe in what you are doing.”
But his own memories of school are far from encouraging until he realised his strength and his passion for sport when he got to Lytton High School.
“School was pretty ho-hum — in my day there were pretty disciplinarian-style teachers with large classes. You went to school to fill the day I think.”
He followed brother Ian to teachers' training college at Ardmore in Auckland, a residential training institution which was “very multi-cultural with a strong Pacific Island community who came from the islands on scholarships to train”.
It was here he met his wife Mona who had a scholarship from Fiji to come and complete her training. Peter and Mona married at the end of their training in 1975 and moved to Gisborne where Mona started work at Mangapapa School and Peter began teaching at Gisborne Intermediate where he stayed for six years.
He was then approached by the inspectorate Ron Dower to be principal at Tauwhareparae School inland from Tolaga Bay.
“Two teachers together were quite employable and you had to do two years of country service if you wanted to get promotion and not get stuck on a salary bar.
“They did up the house for us and part of the deal was that our two-and-a-half-year-old Andrea could come to school each day with us. There were about 33 kids and it was a perfect fit for us.”
The next step for Peter and Mona was to Whangara which was like moving to town, he said. By this time their family had welcomed Kahlia and Craig.
“It was a totally different community to Tauwhareparae. At Whangara School we had farm owners' and managers' and workers' families as well as those who worked in town and those from the Mmrae so it was a diverse community, and we had a third teacher.”
They left Whangara at the end of 1989. This was the time of the Picot Report and Prime Minister David Lange introduced “Tomorrow Schools” giving more control to schools and communities (Board of Trustees were established) and there was meant to be a downsizing of the Ministry of Education.
In 1990 Peter was appointed deputy principal of his old primary school Mangapapa where he had started as a five- year-old.
He left after a year to begin a challenging job as rural advisor covering 75 schools from Potaka to Raupunga.
In May 1994 the contract for the rural advisors' position in the Gisborne region was terminated by Waikato University and Peter went relieving for a while.
“I ended up teaching at Lytton High School when Peter Gibson was the principal. He had been a teacher there when I attended — it was strange walking in the first time as a teacher.”
He has now completed the full circle having taught at every school he attended as a student.
One of the biggest challenges he has faced as principal of Ilminster has been around staffing.
Back at the beginning of his time there in 1995 there was a national teacher shortage and Peter made a request to his board to go to Australia to recruit staff.
Principal of Te Wharau at the time, Jim Corder — a close friend of his — agreed to go with him with a shopping list requiring 17 staff for schools in Gisborne and Wairoa.
“We advertised in Adelaide — why Adelaide? Because I had never been there.
“I placed an advertisement in Adelaide and arranged for CVs to be sent to the hotel I had booked and we arrived in early January to in excess of 40 CVs.”
What he hadn't realised was that the hotel he had booked and where they would carry out the interviews was in the red light district.
One can imagine the scenario of two middle-aged men conducting interviews in a hotel room in a dodgy part of town, and most astonishing of all is that not a single one asked for any documentation confirming they were legitimate.
The good news was that by this time the Ministry, which had not supported the decision to recruit from Australia, rang while they were there to give its approval and said it would provide a relocation allowance and a finder's fee.
By the end of the week in Adelaide, they offered 17 positions and gave them a date in late January to arrive in Gisborne.
“When they got off the plane we would give them $3000 each and believe it or not, every one of them got off the plane on the date requested.
“Never at any stage did any of them question if we were legitimate — unbelievable. But as Jim said — don't worry, they're Aussies!”
Peter breaks down the challenges he has faced into three categories: bureaucracy; a lack of quality support services for at-risk students and whanau; individuals and whanau who are struggling whether it be because of domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse or because they are financially disadvantaged.
“The most difficult part of being a principal is dealing with situations where the outcome isn't going to have a happy ending.”
At his farewell assembly it was clear that Peter Ferris has had a positive and enduring impact on the students and staff at Ilminster Intermediate and will be missed.
But he has a few bucket list things to do like spending quality time with his wife and kids, playing more tennis, fishing more, getting fitter and spending more time up the Coast.
“If I had my time again I would more than likely do the same again as I do believe I have made a difference. What I would have loved to do . . . be a dairy farmer!”
