Bus axe clouds Westshore school's future

A withdrawal of the Westshore School bus service would not only impact on parents and pupils, it also had the potential to eventually close the school, parents and teachers have said.
Lisa Ranapiri, who lives in Bay View and has two boys who attend Westshore School, said like other parents she was "surprised and upset" to learn that the Ministry of Education had announced it planned to reduce the bus service from Bay View from the start of the 2011 school year.
School principal Martin Madden, who saw the children on to the bus yesterday, expressed the same fears that if there was a total pull-out of services it could end up closing the school.
He said a significant fall in the roll was on the cards if the buses were canned, and that could tip the balance. There are presently about 125 pupils at Westshore, with about 45 eligible for the bus.
He and the board of trustees have planned a public meeting early next month, to go through the issue.
The ministry had advised the present service would be cut to just one drop-off point, at Onehunga Rd, from the start of the first term.
However, it was also announced recently that even that service would come in for review just two months later.
Mrs Ranapiri said she believed the ministry had a hidden agenda and was planning to eventually axe the service, which had run for about 70 years, completely.
"When I first heard about the service being cut back it never occurred at the time that there was a bigger picture here."
She said if pupil numbers using the buses fell, so too could the school roll - and that would bring the viability of keeping the school open into question.
The Ministry of Education had stated that the bus service was no longer financially viable and did not comply with its pupil catchment policy.
"I find that rationale absurd," Mrs Ranapiri said.
"The bus service has been operating since the 1930s and openly operated outside the policy for some time. Why are they enforcing a catchment area that includes the main highway, the airport, extensive farmland and ocean but excludes the existing pupils who live in Bay View?"
She said apart from future uncertainty over how to get children to and from school, and the additional costs that would involve, parents could also be faced with having to move schools part-way through the year.
The other school in the region was Eskdale School, which was currently under expansion, in the wake of the ministry purchasing additional land for it.
Mrs Ranapiri said she could see the ministry's point of view but argued a service was essential and children should not be disadvantaged.
If it came to it, the loss of the school would also have a major impact on local businesses, she said.
A public meeting will be held at 7pm on December 2, at the school hall, which the mayor, councillors, and local MPs had been invited to attend. Minister of Education Anne Tolley had also been invited.