Nelson Weekly Locally Owned and Operated
03 548 2770
41 Nile Street East, Nelson
03 548 2770 03 548East, 2770 41 Nelson 41 Nile Nile Street Street East, Nelson 41 Nile Street East, Nelson
Wednesday 8 February 2023
School provides stationery for free KATE RUSSELL A Nelson primary school is providing every pupil’s stationery to help ease the financial burden on families. Victory Primary School is picking up the tab on stationery packs for its 295 pupils - and at $30 per pack, that’s almost $9,000 worth of books and pens. Principal Dan George says they introduced the free stationery initiative at the end of 2021 to support children and their whānau. “We are a school with our community at the heart of everything we do. Supplying stationery is one less thing for our whānau to worry about at the start of the year.” Dan says they use a portion of their school donation scheme funding to cover the cost. “One of our guiding principles is equity, so we supply stationery to ensure that every child is set up for success from day one.” Feedback from whānau has been very positive. Naome Mortimer-Green has two children at the school and says having them supply the stationery free of charge is “a blessing that most families would otherwise find very hard”. “It takes the stress off parents both with money and time. Trying to budget for daily living costs is hard enough now with everything going up, including rent and mortgage rates, especially when you have multiple school-age children.” However, some local parents are feeling the pinch of stationery costs this year.
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Jill Clendon’s father Tom died after being knocked off his bike on Champion Rd: Photo: Tracy Neal.
Being angry a ‘wasted emotion’ Daughter of man killed in cycling accident
TRACY NEAL
Open Justice Reporter
Cyclist Tom Clendon loved to ride. But a trip to the supermarket to buy supplies for his elderly wife’s morning tea party was the last one he would ever make. The retiree was riding his e-bike down Champion Road on 8 April last year at the same time motorist Aaron Taylor was dropping his
daughter at school. Taylor’s daughter had left a computer cable in the car and in his eagerness to get it to her he opened his car door just as Clendon rode by. The 86-year-old, who had treated himself to the e-bike five years earlier, was wearing a high-vis vest and a helmet, but it couldn’t save him. He was flung over the bike’s handlebars and landed on the road on his head and back. Taylor responded immediate-
ly, dialling 111 and providing comfort to Clendon who, at that stage, was not showing signs of a fatal brain injury. But the life of the beloved father, husband, mentor, grandad and former Air New Zealand industrial relations manager, who had been with the airline through the worst of times including the terrible years of the Erebus disaster, was slowly ebbing away. “At the accident site he had apparently been fine, but he’d
hit his head and there was a bleed in the brain,” says Tom’s daughter Jill Clendon. In the quiet early hours of April 10, having been taken off life support, he died in a room at Nelson Hospital a week shy of his 87th birthday, with his daughter by his side. Jill says her years as a senior manager in the health sector didn’t prepare her for the personal blow; the tragic end to a
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Come meet our friendly new assistant Mira! Mira uses courteous greetings, can sing Happy Birthday or a love song for a special occasion and uses shelves built into its body to help carry away heavy plates.
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