Heather du Plessis-Allan: Tim O'Connor has been vindicated

Out of all the schools in Auckland today, this is the list of schools that made the right decision re: the weather 

Auckland Grammar.

That’s the list.

As far as we can tell, Auckland Grammar is the only school that opened today. Every other school chose to shut its doors and not teach kids today. 

That decision has earned Auckland Grammar the opprobrium of social media, who have called the school elitist, entitled, irresponsible, ignorant. And the principal an a-hole and a dickhead.

Turns out those haters are wrong, Tim O’Connor has been vindicated.

He looked at the weather report like any one of the other principals could’ve, and saw that the rain wasn’t due to start really coming in until around 3 o’clock.

So he made the call to run school from 9am to 2pm and get the kids home before the weather really packed up.

And as predicted, the rain started packing up around 3 o’clock. But until then it was, for the most part, just a wet day in Auckland.

Tim O’Connor is a principal doing his job, which is to get kids into class and get them taught. 

Unfortunately for us, since Covid, we seem to have got into a national habit of shutting schools too easily. Or giving kids a myriad excuses for not turning up.

And what we’re doing is a creating a habit. 

There is a reason Auckland Grammar is as successful as it is. It is a state school, not a private school like many haters around the country seem to think.

And yet, parents pay huge amounts of money to move into suburbs zoned for Auckland Grammar. This is why.

Because it teaches the boys to turn up and not find the first excuse not to. 

Good on Tim O’Connor for being the only principal to make the right call today. 

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.