Kuranui principal going in 2008 after 10 years

Kuranui College principal Grey Tuck has resigned and will leave the school early next year after a decade in charge.
In an interview yesterday, Mr Tuck said it was time for "a new leadership direction" at Kuranui and he will take a short breather before deciding what to do in future.
Mr Tuck is confident he leaves the school in good heart, saying Kuranui has regained its good standing in the community after being beset with problems in the early 1990s.
He revealed his desire to see the college expand to become a Year 7 to Year13 school.
Mr Tuck said although Kuranui's small feeder schools were in many respects "wonderful schools" they would sometimes only have a single Year 8 student and that is not ideal for the child's development.
It is also his view that Wairarapa has too many secondary schools.
Kuranui's roll has drifted back over the years to not much more than its opening roll of nearly 50 years ago about 450 pupils.
Mr Tuck said it is a fact of life that Wairarapa schools are suffering from a "demographic exodus" that would continue to affect them for years to come.
Although the popularity of South Wairarapa as a place to live has snowballed, many of the new arrivals are couples whose families are already off their hands and who have either retired or are middle-aged lifestylers.
During his tenure that will end at the conclusion of term one next year Mr Tuck considers the push towards becoming a digital school to be a major project.
It is one though that has been fraught with frustration.
The slow broadband speed suffered by the college means the school gets only 512 kilobytes per second into the school.
"This slow service has affected our development as a digital school.
"For instance when our video conference unit is being used the rest of the school has access to 250 kilobytes.
"You can spend long periods of time watching the scroll bar move slowly across the screen."
He said this causes students and teachers alike to lose faith in digital technology and to revert to "textbooks and chalk and talk".
His other frustration is lack of government resources for education.
"Despite a large surplus this government can't see its way clear to fully resource schools."
Schools are forced to turn to parents and communities for financial help.
"The notion of a free education is fast becoming a myth."
On leaving Kuranui Mr Tuck said he plans to dust off his surfboard "Mahaia is looking pretty good" but is not ready to retire.
"This door is closing and the next one just hasn't opened yet."
He tried out for a job in Lima, Peru, working at a large British school and, although he was short-listed as one of eight from round the world, he missed out.
Mr Tuck's arrival at Kuranui in April 1998 brought a new era of peace to the school that had been through a rough patch, having had its affairs taken over by a commissioner after then education minister Dr Lockwood Smith disbanded the Board of Trustees as being dysfunctional.
Board in-fighting had reached the stage where even the students rebelled, staging a lunchtime students strike.
Mr Tuck had been assistant principal of Northland's Bream Bay College and took over the reins at Kuranui from deputy principal Dave McGibbon who had been standing in for six months after principal Joye Halford quit.
He was the school's fourth full-time principal since Kuranui College opened in February 1960.
The foundation principal was Sam Meads a cousin of legendary All Black Colin Meads who was there for 16 years, followed by Peter Werry and later Miss Halford.