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The Otara community sees the abolition of the school board at Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate as a positive step and students say they hope to feel safer when school resumes on Thursday.
Education Minister Anne Tolley last week dissolved the school's board of trustees and replaced it with commissioner Gail Thomson, former executive principal of Diocesan School.
Her decision followed an Education Review Office report raising serious concerns about the safety of students and quality of teaching at the school.
Maxine Fruean, who was a student from 2002 to 2006, said she often felt unsafe during class - she saw teachers slap pupils across the face, kick them in the shins and throw objects at anyone who appeared to disrupt the lesson.
The abuse went unreported because students from Pacific Island backgrounds felt it was inappropriate to criticise their elders, she said.
She remembers the students were afraid of two male teachers who would turn on the students, but at the time senior management did not appear to know what was going on.
Her 15-year-old brother returns to school on Thursday and hopes to see less violence, new rules and better teachers this year.
Mrs Tolley also replaced Selwyn College's school board with a commissioner on January 20 after a damning ERO report criticising the board of trustees' relationship with its local Kohimarama community.
This means there are now 28 commissioners overseeing schools that had problematic boards and a further 42 have statutory managers in place to advise board members.
Post Primary Teachers' Association president Kate Gainsford said the growing number of school boards being replaced by commissioners illustrates the association's concerns about the Tomorrow's Schools system which introduced the current school board concept 20 years ago.
The system, which places the education system in the hands of local communities and the trustees who are meant to represent them, leaves under-resourced communities "high and dry", she said.
John Minto, of the Quality Public Education Coalition, said schools in low-income communities often struggled to find the skilled people needed to run a school.
"I think the schools in low-income communities need to revert back to the role of overseeing the well-being of their students, but not being required to be lawyers and accountants and money managers for the school," he said.
Mr Minto, who taught at the former Hillary College in 1986, remembers it as a wonderful school and an asset to the community. It was run by a board of governance and the ministry of education dealt with the administration.
Mr Minto recalled that at the time Hillary College's principal welcomed the Tomorrow's Schools concept and said it would be a step forward for Otara, "but in reality it became a huge step backwards because within two or three years the school began to struggle".
Manukau City Councillor Arthur Anae, for the Otara ward, said everyone in Otara wanted better academic results for local students so they could have the "hope of a better tomorrow".
Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate was formerly Hillary College before the primary and intermediate dep-artments were added in 2003. The majority of students, 83 per cent, are from Pacific backgrounds and the remainder identify as Maori.
It is now run by three principals and the ERO report said there was a level of distrust between them, as well as between the principals and senior management.
The board of trustees was also failing to govern the college and address student safety issues.
ERO said the school found it difficult to retain teachers, and also failed to follow New Zealand Teachers' Council guidelines for staff appraisals.
