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Wednesday 9 June 2021
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Leaping into victory
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Centres closed after licences stripped Andrew Board
Sheila Pollitt, who lost her son to Covid-19, is searching for a book about him that was accidentally donated to the Founders Book Fair. Photo: Kate Russell.
Precious book mistakenly donated
Kate Russell
When Sheila Pollitt realised that her husband accidentally donated their most precious book to the Founders Book Fair, she knew it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. The book is precious because it features their son Nigel, who passed away from Covid-19 in Australia last year at age 61. Now Sheila, and her husband Jim, are on a mission to get it back - the
problem is they can’t recall the name of the book or the author. The book is about the tall ship, or schooner, Sofia that sank on February 23, 1982, off the North Island of New Zealand, between Cape Reinga and North Cape. Nigel, a keen sailor, was one of the 17 crew members on board. “He loved the sea,” says Sheila. “He is mentioned in the book and there are photos of him. That was the precious part.
“Jim accidentally put the book in the donation box, which we took to Founders for the book fair. A week later we realised it was missing.” Sheila says it was difficult losing their son during the Covid-19 lockdown. “Nigel passed away on the very first day of lockdown. We couldn’t go over to Australia or do anything. It made it so much harder.” Sheila says they have tried looking
Two early childhood education centres in Nelson have closed their doors just months after their operating licences were suspended by the Ministry of Education. ACE Titoki and ACE Nayland – both owned by the same company – closed their doors in March and May respectively, giving parents just two weeks’ notice to find another facility for their children before doing so. It came after the ministry first suspended, then downgraded the licences held by the centres in December last year. Both centres had their licences suspended for a week from December 14 last year for not meeting the minimum standards for curriculum, management and administration, health and safety, premises and facilities and for ill-treating children. They then had their licences downgraded to provisional for not meeting the minimum
standards for management and administration from December 22. Nationally, 43 centres were handed a suspension last year, with 218 downgraded to a provisional licence. Co-owner Tim Powell says the closure was due to many factors – including personal issues – and came on the back of a tough year. “We had a huge reputation, brilliant pre schools that worked really, really well. We had a wonderful time and it’s been an amazing experience. But the last year was very difficult for us and for many businesses in this community.” He says they had a “great team” and met lot of “really cool kids and cool families”. “We’re not a big corporate, just a family business and we’ve operated proudly that way for almost ten years.” The site at Nayland Rd won’t be empty for long though with a new centre, Little Red Fox, taking over the lease and preparing to open in the coming months.
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