Growing school in shrinking grounds

By WAYNE THOMPSON

One of the biggest high schools on the North Shore has been dubbed the "traffic island" because so much of its land has been taken for roads and other public works.

Westlake Girls High School was clipped along one boundary by the extension of the Northern Motorway.

Now, the North Shore Busway project is taking three playing fields for a bus station on the school's west side.

Its No 1 soccer field will be used as a construction zone for the busway.

On the southern side, a new road is to be built for buses, and a roundabout for it will mean the removal of three classrooms.

On another side, a 5m-wide strip will be taken for widening the Wairau Rd artery.

Principal Alison Gernhoefer said the school of 2050 pupils was losing 11 per cent of its 7.9ha site because of council works.

This meant having to rejig the campus, including building a 27-classroom block and removing 24 obsolete classrooms.

Mrs Gernhoefer said the addition of two classrooms was to accommodate the extra 100 students who swelled the school roll last year.

More growth was expected because of the estimated 11 per cent rise in population on the North Shore over the next decade.

Despite its shortage of land, the school would oblige a North Shore City Council request to yield a further 1.5m of land on Wairau Rd to allow a landscaped buffer for the new classroom block.

The request came after a special meeting of the council on Thursday.

Although the school's reorganisation plans were approved by the council's regulatory and hearings committee on April 2, some councillors and the Takapuna Community Board expressed concerns.

Councillor Andrew Williams wanted the committee decision revoked and the glass facade of the block set 3m back from the road frontage.

Otherwise, the long block would be hard up against the footpath after the road was widened.

It would be the "Fort Knox" of the North Shore, he said.

Set-back rules were being waived for the school but other developers had to make their buildings attractive.

Mr Williams was also concerned at the lack of opportunity for himself and Takapuna planning commissioners to have a say about the plans and that the committee had ignored the advice of a senior council planner.

He believed the Minister of Education should be told that the school had reached its capacity and to build a new school somewhere else.

Murray Irwin, chairman of the school's board of trustees, said pushing back the new block 3m would have knocked out other classrooms and the school's swimming pool and boiler house.

In a fire drill, there would be less than one field available for an outside marshalling area.

The council was creating the problem of the building being close to the footpath by its road widening, Mr Irwin said.

Work on rebuilding the school was urgent.

Two generations of students had put up with substandard facilities - below the legal code requirements - while rebuilding was delayed because of uncertainty about how the council's busway proposals would affect it.

He hoped the minister would approve the plans so that improvements would be enjoyed in the new year.