Puddles in Tauhara College's A block of prefabs after a downpour on Wednesday, November 25. Photo / File
Tauhara College's principal and board of trustees say the water-damaged school will be open - one way or another - for the start of the 2021 school year.
And its former principal, who left at the start of 2020, says after years of repairs, it's time for the school's multi-million dollar rebuilding project to finally be given the green light.
The Taupō school was forced to close last Thursday for the rest of the year after its 42-year-old prefab classrooms were badly damaged by a downpour on Wednesday, November 25.
Torrential rain poured in through the joins in the roof, students were evacuated from classrooms and the electricity had to be isolated as staff scrambled to cope with the effects of the deluge.
Senior students had left to sit NCEA exams, which were unaffected, but the school closure meant Year 9 and 10 students missed out on end-of-year camps, activities and the junior prizegiving.
Tauhara College is the smaller of two colleges in Taupō, with a roll of 645 as at July 1, and was established in the 1970s with a set of temporary prefab classrooms.
Some 42 years later those prefabs are still in place and make up the majority of the school's buildings. It's been an increasingly uphill battle keeping them weathertight and fit for use. Leaks in corridors and classrooms are not unusual.
The college has been working with the Ministry of Education for a few years to have a complete overhaul of the property but its business case for a rebuild is still with the ministry awaiting a decision and has been since late 2019.
Former principal Keith Buntting said this week that during his tenure there were dozens of meetings with the Ministry of Education, as well as videos and photographs, tours of the school and reports and proposals provided to the ministry. In addition, the ministry had brought in experts for high-level scoping reports, geotechnical site testing and internal testing.
"There were some anecdotal comments from engineers and other assessors at the time that it was as serious as they had seen in any other school in the country."
He said the ministry was aware of just how dire the situation was and had been supportive in trying to address the problems with the prefabs, spending money on roof repairs, guttering, drainage and heat pumps. But it had had the school's request for a rebuild in front of it for more than a year with no decision, and now was the time for action.
"I think this latest incident proves that these short-term interventions are just not good enough when the core is just not fit for purpose."
Mr Buntting said while principal he spent a lot of time on property issues and had sympathy for the school's new principal, Ben Hancock, who was now having to devote time and energy to managing the building crisis instead of implementing his ideas for positive change.
"The role of principal should be devoted to teaching and learning, staff wellbeing and student wellbeing, not constantly devoted to leaks and property issues.
"The ministry have been very responsive, but this latest incident highlights that Tauhara College needs a significant overall solution. I think they [the Ministry of Education] have a great deal of responsibility and a duty of care to now move really quickly, because this is a conversation that we've been having for three and a half years.
"Our students are as deserving as any students in the country of having a future-focused, warm, dry, modern learning environment."
Tauhara College said in a statement on Tuesday that it was continuing to work with the Ministry of Education, and the ministry's emergency response team was assessing the school to identify the extent of the damage and what the next steps would be
"We will not have a full understanding of the damage until later this month," the statement said.
"What we can confirm is that we will be up and running for 2021. We will be ready to go for schooling at the start of next year at Tauhara College. What our school will look like, we are unsure, but this is an exciting phase of our journey. We will have learning programmes in place for all students."
The college held a meeting with all staff on Monday. It is also working with Taupō's other secondary school, Taupō-nui-a-Tia College, to discuss timetabling and how the two schools can support each other, and groups of staff are visiting other schools around the country to look at how they have coped with major events or significant building projects.
Tauhara College had been part of discussions on future schooling for the region with Taupō-nui-a-Tia College but in its statement said it had withdrawn from those discussions, effective immediately, to allow it to focus on the challenges ahead, although it would continue to work closely and collaboratively with Taupō-nui-a-Tia.
The statement said the college board of trustees wanted to thank and acknowledge principal Ben Hancock and the school's leadership team taking control in such such extraordinary circumstances, as well as the community, fellow boards and schools who had offered support and aroha at such a difficult time.
Parent Adrian Armstrong, who has a son at Tauhara College, says the school buildings are old and cannot cope with the weather and have been in need of repair or upgrading for quite a while.
He said he was grateful that the school closure had come so close to the end of the school year, but it was yet more school time missed in a year of Covid-19 disruption.
Mr Armstrong says facilities aside, Tauhara College provides an excellent education.
"I personally know it's an awesome school. Even before my son went there, just going on the school orientation he was much more impressed with Tauhara, and my wife and I left it completely in his hands.
"He wanted to go there, and since he's been there he's gone beyond what I ever expected him to do. It's just really frustrating to see that it's an awesome school but it's looking old, it's looking run down.
"I'm not angry at the school whatsoever, it's just the situation."
Ministry head of education infrastructure service Kim Shannon said the school received $121,000 this year for day-to-day property maintenance.
This was in addition to funding assigned every five years for property maintenance, small projects and classroom upgrades, which schools chose how to spend.
"We originally assigned Tauhara College $1.35 million for these works in 2017/18 but have since topped it up to $2.25m," she said.
"Using this funding, further work will be carried out at the college to fix roofing and cladding issues and deliver changing room and bathroom upgrades."
The discussions about larger-scale developments were put on hold while Tauhara College held future schooling discussions with Taupō-nui-a-Tia College, Shannon said.
"We are working with the school on a plan to fix their broader property challenges."
Shannon said people had been on site to assess the damage and organise emergency repairs, and engineers were considering what needed to be done to ready the college for the new school year.
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