On Friday 5 September, I received news from the Ministry of Education that work is going to proceed on the design-build of block 1. This building is the first stage of many in our master plan but I have no idea whether any other stages of the plan will actually be built.
When block 1 is completed, it will occupy about half the area of the current car park. It will be a 3 storey building containing 16 classrooms, mostly specialty Science and Technology spaces.
The Ministry is about to go to tender with work hopefully commencing in December or January, and an estimated finish date of January 2027.
Before this work gets underway, there will be works on the Tasman St side of the school (where there are old tennis courts) to convert this space into a car park, to alleviate some of the loss of car parks in the construction process.
The good news with both of these announcements is that although there will be two construction sites on school grounds, neither of these will interfere with normal school operations and students will occupy the same spaces they have done for many years now.
In relation to existing spaces, the communication sent to me said that “…no decision has been made regarding the seismic and condition-related response for your school. We will undertake further due diligence on options to address the seismic and condition issues, with further advice on these aspects to be provided to the Minister in 2026.”
The Minister came to our site on Wednesday 10 September to make the announcement to two interested journalists. Although the interest was a little underwhelming, I was pleased that the journalists who made it, grilled the minister about repeatable design solutions for difficult sites such as ours. You may be able to read one of the stories here. Some of the staff were amused that the Minister happened to time her visit with a visit from the PPTA President, Chris Abercrombie, who came to speak to our staff. Unfortunately, the two didn’t cross paths.
It has been a very eventful last few weeks of term with our annual WHS Talent show, our OutLoud week, winter sports tournaments (with some impressive results particularly for our netball Snr A, girls football and our underwater hockey teams), an exciting, sometimes surprising but always challenging student debate, derived grade exams for seniors, a great senior ball at the Michael Fowler Centre, our music evening and of course, Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori.
The last few days has seen the election of a new Board who will be charged with overseeing the strategic direction of the school over the next three years, as we navigate a changing educational landscape. Congratulations to David Cooling, Lucy Kebbell, Julie Reddish, Antonia Reid, and Lars Stannard (parent representatives), Sue Kemp (staff representative) and Isobel Butler (student representative).
Dominic Killalea
Principal