Nelson Weekly
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Wednesday 28 February 2024
Leaplings celebrate
Page 11
Page 20
Rowing performance impresses
Bus stop ‘recipe for disaster’
Rebecca Kainey, Amy Lowe, Leon Nichols (coach), Jay Remnant and Mika Osman get their skate on at Nelson Intermediate School. Photo: Kate Russell.
SARA HOLLYMAN Concerned parents, a principal and now the local MP are calling into question the safety of a school bus stop on a busy Nelson highway, along with the Ministry of Education’s “disappointing” response. Local parents Miriam Woon and Allison Daughtrey both have children as young as 12 who travel from Todds Valley to attend school in Nelson city. In the morning, the bus picks them up on SH 6 heading into Nelson, a perfectly safe stop according to the pair. However, in the afternoon, the bus pulls into a stop on the opposite side of the highway, leaving students to run across the highway – a stretch of road that is in an 80kmh speed zone. The pair say the intersection is not safe for children to cross, claiming that visibility of cars coming from the direction of the Glen is well outside Waka Kotahi’s safety guidelines. “Since the end of January, there’s been a couple of near misses where kids are stuck in the middle of the road,” Miriam says. The pair say they believe there is a simple solution - letting the children stay on the bus, heading to the Glen, before being dropped off on the safe side of the road when the bus returns to Nelson.
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Wāhine on wheels KATE RUSSELL With Avril Lavigne’s ‘Sk8er Boi’ booming on the speakers, four 11-year-old skater girls from Nelson Intermediate School are learning how to ‘drop in’ on a sunny Friday morning. “Are you trying to kill us?” jokes Jay Remnant, who is part of a group of 15 girls at the school who are learning how to skate under the tutelage of local skating guru,
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Leon Nichols. Leon, who has been coaching young skaters at the school since the skate ramps were installed in 2020, says his goal is to “get more kids on skateboards”. “There are skateparks all over Nelson, but no one is teaching skateboarding.” Teacher Sarah Johns says the programme, called ‘Wāhine on Wheels’, came about after an observation survey conducted by Sport Tasman
found that fewer girls at school were using the ramps. “We asked our young women that if they could have access to mentorship, would they give it a go?” After receiving a positive response, the school received a grant from Sport Tasman that allowed them to buy five skateboards, five helmets, and safety gear, and to employ Leon as a skate coach. “We then put a call out for beginner to experienced skaters,
or ‘skater-wannabees’, to be involved. Now, the spaces are full,” says Sarah. “We’ve got girls who have never skated before, but with that mentorship and someone physically there to support them … we hope to create lifelong skills and friendships. These girls have never met each other before, and now, you just watch them interact.” Sarah says Nelson Intermediate is a
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