Editorial: No winners at Rangiawhia

Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Rangiawhia.

Someone's telling porkies regarding the problems that have beset Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Rangiawhia.

The question is, who? The Ministry of Education and/or its commissioner, who the parents believe have an agenda to close the school come hell or high water, or the parents and former board of trustees, who accept that there have been problems in the past but say they are being addressed?

Talking to both parties hasn't clarified the situation. What is clear is that around 40 children have been forced to enrol at other schools, as far away as Taipa and Kaitaia.

The fundamental question perhaps is how much say a community should have in the fate of its school.

Like a number of issues facing local government, not least whether councils should have the power to resist the advent of GMOs, or even the right to determine how services such as water are provided, at its most basic level it's about democracy.

And democracy seems to be in some peril in this country.

There is absolutely no question that the Ministry of Education is responsible for providing an environment that gives every child the best opportunity to gain a sound education.

That responsibility comes with the right to make decisions that might not sit well with the community. But it is incumbent upon the ministry to take the community's concerns into account, to do the best it can to provide children with the opportunities they deserve whilst recognising that parents' opinions matter.

It is difficult to believe that it is close to achieving that at Rangiawhia.

The parties are poles apart, and they cannot both be right. The ministry says no one wants to teach there - no teachers no school. The parents say they have qualified teachers who are ready, willing and able to step into the classrooms.

If that is true, and the teachers are indeed qualified (and registered), what's the problem?

If the teachers are not acceptable to the ministry it hasn't said so.

There is no doubting the sincerity of the parents spoken to. It takes a real desire to see the school continue for them to turn out on a weekend to spruce the place up, ready for lessons to resume. And their anger last week when the locks were changed and security guards arrived to keep them out was palpable.

The parents, and the redundant board chairman, accept that the school has not enjoyed plain sailing for some time. The issues seem to stem from personality clashes, exacerbated by what seems to have been an unhealthy degree of nepotism.

The ministry has a very clear role to play in dealing with that, but closing the school altogether would seem to be a very blunt instrument. With goodwill on both sides, the issues are surely not insurmountable.

From the bystander's point of view, there seems to be considerable goodwill within the community. The board chairman, who found himself out of the job just four weeks after this year's elections (which he and the parents claim were conducted totally according to Hoyle), has suggested that the new trustees had been in the process of dealing with the issues that had caused such angst, in Wellington and at Whatuwhiwhi.

The chairman has declared himself to be very well versed in the skills he needed, and has spoken highly of the calibre of the other trustees.

The commissioner, on the other hand, has pointed somewhat cryptically to incidents of aggressive behaviour towards staff. It might well be significant that he is unable or unwilling to say whether any of those incidents had been reported to the police.

If they were it would seem that nothing has come of them. If they weren't, one might question how serious they really were.

Meanwhile the latest in a series of principals and the teachers forced the issue when they went on holiday at the end of last term and didn't go back. (The principal's contract had expired, and she reportedly decided not to renew it).

As recently as June this year the Educational Review Office reported "significant changes in leadership, kaiako, and a breakdown in whanau, board and staff relations".

That does not answer the question as to whether the election of a new board, and the parents' claim that qualified teachers were ready to start teaching, might have gone any way towards resolving those problems.

The clear inference is that the parents have been meddling, to the point where the principal and teachers decided they had had enough. It seems likely that that meddling involved the former board of trustees; again it is not known whether the election of new trustees might have resolved that.

The ERO says changes in professional leadership since 2015 had impacted on the implementation of systems, strategic direction and school developments.

What that actually means might not be especially clear to the layman, but in any event those issues were reportedly having an effect on the children's education.

It also seems, from the commissioner's comments, that some of the children had yet to be enrolled at other schools as of early last week. One would hope that whatever the outcome at Rangiawhia, every child will be in front of a teacher sooner rather than later.

Whatever the facts, things have clearly not been happy at Rangiawhia for some time, and given that there have been five principals since 2005, the problems seem well entrenched.

Whether the new trustees were given a fair shot at getting things under control isn't clear.

Four weeks is not a long time to prove a point, and that alone gives some credence to parents' belief that the ministry wants to close the school by fair means or foul.

Generally when a school's future comes into question it's because the supply of children has dried up. That is not the case here. Last week the parents said there were 39 pupils; this year's ERO report put the roll at 52.

It is not known whether the school began leaking pupils before the principal and teachers took things into their own hands.

In fairness to the ministry, it is the expert here. It is all well and good for parents to take a hands-on interest in their children's education, but they do not have the ministry's expertise, or legal responsibility, to ensure that those children are being educated to the required standard.

We can only assume that despite the parents' protestations, and despite the election of what the community says would have been an effective board of trustees, the school has become so dysfunctional that closure is the only option.

That's jumping the gun a little - public submissions on the school's future only closed on Friday - but it's unlikely that the ministry will agree to keep it open. But if the school does close, that will be an admission of failure on the ministry's part. It is supposed to deal with all problems educational, and to close a school that three months ago had 52 pupils would be quite extraordinary.

Whatever decision is made, it must be made openly. The parents and community at Whatuwhiwhi deserve to know exactly why they are to lose their school, if that is the final outcome, and others will want to know why the ministry has turned out to be so powerless to effect change that its only option is to shut the doors and walk away.