In November 2019, our school submitted an education brief to the Ministry of Education to inform a future planning process for the school. At the time, we were experiencing some roll growth and estimates of capital works required for the school were approaching $10,000,000 with considerable work needed on the old Alington concrete blocks.
An architect was appointed in January 2020 and consultation began with students, staff and our community on what a future school might look like. As we know, Covid hit soon after and that affected the design process but things got going again by mid 2021.
There were some interesting issues to work through during the design process. The ministry contracts an architect who is obviously paid for their work, the school is supported where teachers need to be released from classes, but engagement and consultation with mana whenua did not seem to be a part of the process. The school took the position that this was critical from the start, and so mana whenua was engaged and, over time, a cultural narrative was developed.
This cultural narrative focuses on the Takarangi, an intersecting spiral using space to separate solid spirals. In the architect’s ‘masterplan report’, the Takarangi “is viewed (by some) as representing the entry of light and knowledge into the work and depicts the linkage of man with wairua. It can also represent the past knowledge and experience linking through to the present and onto the future.” Further, the Takarangi can represent Māori culture and non-Māori culture connecting the “past, present and future”.
A masterplan for the site has been developed with five stages proposed that would see the eventual demolition of most of the Alington blocks, replaced by buildings that would meet our current and future needs and use the limited space on our site, well. Although the Alington blocks have been a striking symbol of the school, the work required to justify ongoing maintenance seemed to be beyond what the ministry was prepared to fund.
As the planning and design has developed, a multitude of factors have been considered including: seismic investigations, traffic considerations, carbon considerations, demographic reports, planning for social and affordable housing and developments nearby, energy needs and solutions, geotech surveying, heritage listings, human factors such as how students and staff use spaces, roll growth, ICT network design, relationships between subjects and faculties, and neighbourly issues with Polyhigh and Massey university using the same site.
Along the way, as roll growth has continued, the ministry has supplied us with twelve new teaching spaces but the roll growth has outstripped the supply of teaching spaces to leave us still approximately 16 spaces short of our needs.
You can understand our excitement as we proceeded with developed design for our first block which would provide us with 16 extra classrooms, built on about half of our current car park, opening for the start of 2027. You may also know that things in the property space halted in 2024 while a review was undertaken. At the end of that review, we were given the go-ahead to continue with design of block 1, with an assurance that design would continue until 31 March 2025. That design would be taken for funding approval shortly after, with a tender process to follow and construction expected to commence in August this year.
Shortly after the completion of design, I attended a meeting with a couple of ministry property people, one who I didn’t know and the other who is relatively new to our context. Beware the meeting when someone turns up who you’ve never met before!
In the meeting, I was told that the ministry would need to make a strong business case that the current design was the best one in terms of delivering an affordable solution that met not only our property needs but the property needs of other schools. I understand the economics but when I received written advice, I realised I had been let down gently and that the ministry was pursuing repeatable pre-fabricated design as an alternative to the extensive design process that had been undertaken by the architects.
In my most recent meeting on Monday 19 May, I was told that there are three possible ways forward. Firstly, the architect is still engaged in completing detailed design and their design is a possibility. Secondly, a pre-fab solution is being investigated, based on the architect’s design, aimed to fill roughly the same space on the car park against what we need in our first block. The third solution involves repossessing and repurposing existing building infrastructure on the site that is not currently owned or used by the school.
The first solution is obviously our preferred solution. It has been carefully planned to cater for our immediate needs but with an eye on the future and a long term plan to address the shortcomings in our current building stock, in particular, better spaces for our students who have the highest learning support needs.
The second solution will deliver the same number of classrooms in a pre-fabricated format (three storeys, the same as the block 1 design) with a lot of question marks as there is no existing model of a pre-fabricated three storey design, and, as far as I know, no model which includes functional kitchen spaces and Science labs and other specialty spaces.
The third solution may provide surprises for our neighbours so I will not comment any further on that one. However, I suspect it’s not a workable solution for our school or our neighbours.
All of this leaves us in a state of uncertainty and anxiety. A lot of work has been done and we were excited for what the future might bring. However, at this stage, I have no idea what that solution will be!
I know that further investigations have been done on our main block (currently 25% NBS) and our Science block (currently 35% NBS) but I do not know the results of these investigations. The NBS ratings dictate that work urgently needs to occur and this is part of what led to the decision to pursue a ‘master planning’ process in 2019. However, it seems that the decision made in 2019 is going to be revisited.
I sincerely hope that fiscal constraints (and we can argue all day about whether there need to be the sorts of fiscal constraints we are currently facing), do not dictate the solution and undermine all of the holistic elements that are integral in a school design process. Our schools are our future and we want the best for all of our students. Our school property should reflect that.
I will let you know more when I know more about our future property.
Dominic Killalea
Principal