School helps out with road safety

Ruakituri School pupils have been busy planning exactly how they'll spend a $2000 grant from Farmlands for road and safety traffic equipment at the school.

Principal Diana King said the school proposes to use their grant for additional road signage and traffic education.

"We are a remote school of 10 students in a predominantly farming area so we have lots of stock trucks, farm workers, wool buyers, tourists and fishermen passing on our road.

"We have many cluster activities, so when other schools are visiting we need to arrange traffic control due to a blind spot south of the school."

She said the students were thrilled that their application was successful. The school could now afford two new neon lights that would solve the problem of the blind spot, and traffic education could be included as a component of this year's school camp to Rotorua.

The Wairoa school was one of six rural primary schools throughout the North Island to receive the grant.

The money was raised from ten "Ladies Nights" fun events held by Farmlands in rural areas in October last year.

Run with support from Rural Women New Zealand, Farmlands was overwhelmed with the response to the evenings.

Ticket sales were just over 2100 for the series, with some venues selling out.

This is the second year the Ladies Night programme has been run and it is now an annual event.

Last year the grants were given to rural schools to create extra shade.