WAIKANAE SCHOOL`S NEW FACILITY – Kāpiti and Coast Independent

Special Needs Facility

By Peter Corlett

3rd September 2012

IMG_9754 Special Needs area Sept. 2012 — Waikanae School`s new Special Needs facility

Waikanae School`s latest addition

The recently completed $120,000 Special Needs indoor /outdoor learning space is the latest addition to Waikanae school and will be a real asset to the special pupils who will make use of it. – In the past a vacant classroom was used for these students.

Waikanae School principle, Bevan Campbell, commented that the new resource space has been completed just in time.

The vacant classroom currently being used will be needed shortly for a relocated class, due to a planned upgrade of several of the school classroom blocks.

\At present the school has four ORS (ongoing Resourcing Scheme) funded children who require a secure space to work with their teacher aides.

The outdoor area next to a junior classroom block has been paved with safety matting and boundary fencing, as one of the children has been known to climb fences and go exploring.

At the same time an additional playground beside the building has also had safety matting installed, along with a refurbished climbing frame from the 1940s.

The climbing frame or Jungle Gym has been a popular piece of equipment with generations of children at the school, so has been retained.

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STORY OF THE WEEK

Kāpiti Coast councillors have toured of one of Aotearoa's unique buildings, the heritage - listed Rotunda at the former Otaki Health Camp, the country’s first.

Jeremy Smith reports that the 105-year-old, eight-sided rotunda predates the Health Camp.

It wasn't actually built in Otaki, but was one of two built in Rotorua in 1915 as part of a military hospital, on the site of Rotorua’s present public hospital.

Later they were taken to Otaki for the opening of the health camp in 1931.

Full story in the main column (December 19).

100 Years Ago — and the Maori Long March begins

Māori politics was dominated by the influential MPs (and sometime Cabinet ministers) Māui Pōmare ( Waitara statue photo above) and Apirana Ngata.

The 1920's also saw the rise of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana’s religious movement, and the emergence of Te Puea Hērangi in Waikato.

Ngata worked hard to foster Māori scholarship and education and preserve traditional arts and culture.

He convinced the government to establish a Board of Maori Ethnological Research (1923), a Maori Purposes Fund Control Board (1924) and a School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua (1927).

The Reform government also took the first, tentative steps towards settling longstanding Māori grievances.

Agreements with Te Arawa in 1922 and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1926 recognised their respective rights over the Rotorua lakes and Lake Taupō, and led to the establishment of trust boards with some government funding.

Commissions of inquiry which examined Ngāi Tahu grievances (1920–21) and the Waikato and Taranaki confiscations (1926–27) recommended that modest compensation be paid.