Future Educational Initiatives Mataariki Mataariki is the Trust Board project that aims to open new schools in Auckland through which the Trust Board will meet its obligations to use its funds to provide education for children of all races, but mainly for Maori. Mataariki will not necessarily be the name of a new school or schools. The Board has decided that it will no longer provide boarding facilities as the demand for boarding (and the ability of whanau to pay boarding fees) is not sufficient to make it a financially viable option. The Board has also decided that future schools will be co-educational so that facilities do not need to be duplicated. Excellence in schooling needs to begin at Day 1. The Board found at the two former boarding schools that many of its students who received their primary and intermediate education at a variety of state schools did not have a sound educational base upon which to build their secondary education. That indicated that in order to achieve excellent educational outcomes the Board should aim to engage with students at a much younger age. The Mataariki project is looking at starting that engagement at Year 1, continuing until Year 13. In Auckland traveling times are too great to expect young children from all over Auckland to travel to a central school. Therefore the option of building up to three junior schools in West, South and East Auckland is being investigated. The Parnell site is centrally located in Auckland and is the ideal (and only) available site for a central Secondary or Senior School in such a network. The Board has also committed to spend its funding to support educational achievement in the classroom rather than supporting boarding facilities, and is investigating how this might be best achieved. A longitudinal action research programme, based in schools and designed to develop models of Maori education that achieve educational excellence is being considered. At present Bombay is not ideally located to serve as a day school but the intention is to retain land at Bombay for another school when it is required, and when transport of day pupils to the school will be a viable option. First Things First The Trust Board must first recover from decades of being financially over-extended, by paying off accumulated debt and developing much increased revenue, before it can contemplate building new schools. The period from 2001 to 2005 was spent restructuring the Board's business, and catching up on at least ten years' deferred maintenance, in order to restore existing income generating assets to their full potential. The site at Parnell has been leased to provide extra income during the restructuring period, and the Bombay farm lands have also been considerably upgraded and new farm leases entered into to provide more income. The Bombay site has also had a completely new and very costly sewerage disposal system installed as the old system was not environmentally acceptable and had lost its resource consent. The Board also learned (after school closure) that local government had intended to force the closure of St Stephen's School if a new or upgraded system was not installed. While the Board was using all available funding to keep hostels open it could not afford to address that serious environmental issue. The Board is now focusing on building new business and income so that in the future it can provide educational facilities and educational support without endangering its own financial viability. In doing so the Trust Board intends to banish the financial problems that have beset it and its predecessors for over 150 years. This must be done before Mataariki can proceed with any guarantee of success and sustainability.