Residents of rural Hawke's Bay community Te Pōhue held an emergency meeting to discuss cuts to the school bus route. Photo / KC Jordan
Residents of rural Hawke's Bay community Te Pōhue held an emergency meeting to discuss cuts to the school bus route. Photo / KC Jordan
Residents of a small rural Hawke’s Bay community fear the mothballing of a school bus route could drive people away and lead to the end of their local school.
The Ministry of Education decided to terminate one of the two school bus routes operating in Te Pōhue andamend the other after an audit in May last year and a review of student data found patronage did not reach the Government’s required threshold for a service to run.
James Meffan, MoE group manager of school transport, said the data showed the route from SH5/Te Haroto, 1104 Waitara Rd and Te Pohue School had 10 eligible students on it, while the route that went from Te Pohue School to Glengarry Rd and back had four eligible students on it.
There must be eight or more students who meet the ministry’s eligibility criteria to qualify for a school bus.
“Our review also found that the high school students from Te Pōhue who were utilising the primary school bus are not eligible for school transport assistance as they are not attending their closest state or state-integrated school,” Meffan said.
MoE met with affected schools in September to discuss the findings and ask for feedback on its proposal to terminate the Te Pohue School and Glengarry Rd route and amend the other.
The schools were notified in November 2023 that Te Pōhue area school bus services would be amended with a start date of Term 2 this year.
The new route will be from 496 Waitara Rd to the corner of McVicar Rd to Ohurakura Rd to Te Pohue School.
“We will continue to monitor the number and location of primary students who live in Te Pōhue and have encouraged the schools to reach out to us if there is any change,” Meffan said.
Residents of rural Hawke's Bay community Te Pohue held an emergency meeting to discuss cuts to the school bus route. Photo / KC Jordan
Resident KC Jordan has a primary school-age child attending Te Pohue School and a high schooler.
Both currently get picked up from the end of her driveway by the bus, but the potential change could mean up to two hours of extra driving a day for Jordan to get her children to school.
“I think it is about six kilometres to the next high school bus and for the primary school bus I may as well drop her off directly to school,” Jordan said.
“If we lose our buses, we are going to lose our primary school up here and that is a blow to quite a tight-knit community.”
She said the next nearest bus pick-up for secondary school students to get into town, on Glengarry Rd in Eskdale, was also soon to go in Term 3.
“We are going to have to drive the high school kids to Bay View, which is about half an hour away,” she said.
“If this doesn’t get sorted, I won’t be able to work and I may have to homeschool my children.”
She said she was unhappy that high school students were losing access to their school bus because they wanted a choice of schools to attend rather than being forced to attend the closest state school.
In an emergency meeting on Thursday, called by Te Pōhue Community Trust and attended by Hastings Deputy Mayor Tania Kerr and Napier MP Katie Nimon, members of the community called for MoE to put any changes to the Te Pōhue bus route on hold until the end of this school year to allow the community to work out a plan and an alternative for the bus run
Brown pointed to a steady decline in the Te Pohue School population - Government data shows 31 students enrolled in 2019 compared to just 15 last year.
“Many [locals] live down long side roads. The bus route has declined over the years and nobody has taken any action to stop it.”
He feared people would be driven to leave Te Pōhue and move back into town, furthering a long-term erosion of the local population.
He said the Te Pōhue community hub looked after between 150 and 200 people during Cyclone Gabrielle.
Nimon said she was able to bring her experience as the former manager of a bus company to help explain to residents the rules, how they worked and some of the options the community has.
“It is an operational process, it is something the Ministry of Education has been doing for years. Even while Nimon’s [bus company] did school bus runs we were battling curtailment to the runs and potential future cuts of services so it was something I was very pleased to support the community with,” Nimon said.
She said these sorts of things could have a greater impact on rural communities than they may have on other communities.
“I’ve already talked to the minister [of education, Erica Stanford] about school bus issues and I was writing a letter just to show what is happening in the region so she is aware of it.”
James Pocock joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2021 and writes breaking news and features, with a focus on environment, local government and post-cyclone issues in the region. He has a keen interest in finding the bigger picture in research and making it more accessible to audiences. He lives in Napier. james.pocock@nzme.co.nz
