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Incoming Ahuroa School principal Wayne Steele has a pedigree that makes him the perfect fit for the role.
He’s a country boy born and bred, grew up on a dairy farm and has had the principalship at not one, but two rural schools – most recently, four-and-a-half years at Ruawai School, and before that, six-and-a-half years at Tangowahine School, near Dargaville.
Steele, who takes over from Terry Taylor as principal at the beginning of Term One (officially on January 28), says he was brought up in rural schools and loves the environment.
“If you think about a rural school, they’re often smaller and, therefore, you get to know the kids and the families really well. It’s definitely about those relationships.
“Also, in a rural setting you can provide hands-on, authentic learning experiences,” he says.
This could look like school trips to local farms, planting vegetation along a riverbank, visiting a cheese factory, or a member of the community imparting their wisdom to the schoolkids.
“The local Ahuroa Volunteer Fire Brigade might do a demonstration at the school, or one of the parents might come in and give a talk. We’ve got a dad who’s a pilot, who has shared his experiences with the senior kids.
“This type of learning is very cool.”
Steele relocated from Kaipara to Snells Beach with his family in 2024 and was Ahuroa’s acting principal at the end of Term Three, while former principal Terry Taylor was on sick leave, and then a fixed term teacher there in Term Four.
Now that he has the principalship permanently, what are his plans for the school?
“Terry and all the previous people involved with Ahuroa have done a great job.
“I had the opportunity to see how Terry was running things last year. I was able to pick his brain and see where he wanted the school to go, and whether that aligned with my thoughts, which most of it did.”
Steele says he’s looking to connect more with Mahurangi College, because that’s where most of the Ahuroa kids flow through to.
“We want to have more engagement with the college. The new (Mahurangi College) head girl for 2025 Tessa Berger is a former Ahuroa pupil so we’d like to get her to come and talk to the kids.”
Steele says he would also like to organise visits to the college for Ahuroa seniors so that the transition when they leave the school isn’t as daunting.
“Even if it’s just to suss out the physical space, because it’s a big change, you know, going from little Ahuroa School to Mahu College. It’s a big step up.”
Steele is keen to get behind the government’s new structured maths and literacy curriculums, which are being introduced from Term One this year, and “really get those pumping”.
“So that’s resourcing professional development for the staff and getting our teeth into a particular programme.”
Steele, who will do some teaching in the senior class, says there aren’t too many differences between his previous school Ruawai and Ahuroa – one area where they do differ, though, is the amount of government funding the school receives.
“Under the old decile rating system (which was replaced by the Equity Index in 2023), we were a low decile at Ruawai, but we’re definitely not a low decile at Ahuroa so the school funding is very different, which makes life tricky.
“But we have a really strong PTA (Parent Teacher Association) at Ahuroa, and a tight-knit group of parents that drive it.
“The PTA does a lot of fundraising. We had a Christmas market at the end of last year and we’ve got a horse-riding event coming up – the PTA does a whole lot of things that really support the school,” he says.
Steele says like other rural schools, Ahuroa is the hub of the community.
“It’s about getting engagement from the community. We have to have that relationship.”
Former principal steps down after rollercoaster ride
Retiring Ahuroa School principal Terry Taylor may have only led the primary for a relatively short time, but the positive impact he has made there will be long-lasting.
Taylor worked tirelessly helping guide the school through an almost unbelievable series of unfortunate events that included covid, Cyclone Gabrielle, power outages and ongoing flooding.
Taylor, who officially retires on January 27, says being a principal is a tough job at the best of times and that you’ve got to be mindful of how you manage your health in the role.
“Especially at a small school. There’s not as much resource and the buck stops with you. There’s way too many of us who burn out,” he says.
It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the reason Taylor is moving on is because of a health scare he had last year, which required him to take “five or six weeks” of leave.
“When I came back I made the decision that I needed to retire. I’m not that old, I’m 61, but the sort of health scare I had gave me a bit of a wake-up call.”\If anyone has earned an early retirement it’s Taylor.
When he first took over from Michelle Nell as principal at Ahuroa in Week Four, Term Two in 2022, the country was just coming out of covid, with border restrictions and vaccine mandates starting to ease.
“Covid had a huge impact on the community because it just stopped people getting together. And then when I started, the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) had fizzled out and disappeared.
“I had three parents that had all started about the same time with their kids and I tapped them on the shoulder saying, ‘let’s get a PTA going’. And over my three years, I’ve watched the development of that.
“We started off slow and steady (but the PTA continued to grow). Earlier this year I was at a PTA meeting and there were over a dozen people in the room, which is a lot for a small rural school,” he says.
In February 2023, Taylor then had to deal with the destruction caused by Cyclone Gabrielle, which closed the main road to the school – Ahuroa Road, between Puhoi and Ahuroa (MM Feb 23, 2023).
“People who were literally a 10-minute drive on the school bus couldn’t get to Ahuroa because the road was broken in between. From memory, we dropped 10 children from a school roll of only 60.
“We had to work through those storms, which had a huge effect. The community, and the PTA were the rock behind all that. The road is open now, but it’s still being worked on. You know, it’s still a rough old ride.”
About two months after Gabrielle, that’s when the floods started.
“Almost every time it rained, it flooded. The floods went on and on for us. Pretty much every week we’d have a flood.
“One Friday I was watching the tide and the weather, but we’d made a plan. I’d already said to the parents, ‘make sure you’ve got your phone with you’. And sure enough, at about 10 o’clock in the morning, there was a river running down our driveway.
“It was almost high tide, so we knew within a short time we were going to be cut off. Luckily, I’d made up emergency beds and had food inside the schoolhouse, then at five o’clock, the tide went out, the water dropped and then we were able to get off site.”
The natural disasters certainly won’t be missed, but what is Taylor sad to say goodbye to?
“I’ll miss the children and the community, the kids in particular. It doesn’t matter who they are, what their characters are, they’re all beautiful people, even your tough kids. At the end of the day they’re all kids and they say the funniest things to you.
“That’s what you miss whenever you leave a school,” he says.
