Dec 10th, 2017: Tuturumuri School

[xoxoxoBruce]

This is the Tuturumuri school. It’s a very nice school. It’s neat and clean.
It has a heated indoor pool. It has three staff. It has no students.

Tuturumuri school in Wairarapa in the North Island has been without any children for the last term and has no new children scheduled to start in the new year.
Teachers say the lack of students is down to families moving out of the area as the region’s farming industry contracts.
However, the school’s board has said it won’t give up just yet, and will use its savings account to pay three staff so it can remain open for the coming term.
If they still don’t have any enrolments next year, the plan is to buy a bus so children can be taught in the nearest town, 35km away.

Charmaine Potter, who works as a teacher’s aide at Tuturumuri, said there were benefits to attending small schools. “I have had the beauty of seeing what a lot of one-on-one teaching can have on the children and the classroom, especially when they can get lost in some of the bigger schools,” she told the New Zealand Herald.
“It is kind of nice when you are in a little school with a small amount of students and you can actually spend that time helping them and watching them grow and learn.”
Tuturumuri school had 22 students five years ago, but numbers have dwindled steadily since then.

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[Gravdigr]

If they still don’t have any enrolments next year, the plan is to buy a bus so children can be taught in the nearest town, 35km away.

Um...

What children?

[xoxoxoBruce]

I guess the ones left but not coming to school.

[monster]

Tutur u muri? Tutur u lessi!

[monster]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

Um...

What children?

Any that move to the area in the future?

35km is quite a bus ride to school, but really seems more sensible than running a school for so few. I used to live in a rural area and there were some state schools which were weekly boarding schools to deal with pupils living in really remote areas. And on tidal islands (Lindisfarne to be precise)

[xoxoxoBruce]

In High School I rode the bus a little over 10 miles to school, which is about 16 kilometers. More than twice that would really suck.

[Clodfobble]

I have no idea how many miles my random-ass circuitous bus route went, but the total drive time was at least an hour and a half each way.

[Griff]

35 k! Luxury!

NZed's roads are pretty sketchy though.

[xoxoxoBruce]

They could let people live in the empty school.

...a recent report by Yale University concluded the country is suffering the highest rate of homelessness in the developed world with 40,000 people, nearly 1 per cent of the population, living on the streets or in emergency housing or substandard shelters.

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