New Norfolk Primary School Opens Its 1999 Year

New Norfolk Primary School opened its school year on a grey Wednesday morning, with rain coming down the valley from the west. By half past eight the drop-off zone on the street outside was backed up. Parents of the new Prep children parked wherever they could and walked their children in under umbrellas, and many of them stayed well past the bell.

The Prep intake was one of the larger the school had taken, and the two Prep rooms were full by nine. Several children cried at the classroom doors, and one boy had to be retrieved from the car park twice. The older grades went straight to their rooms, where teachers handed out book lists and seating plans, and the day's planned outdoor assembly was cancelled. The school ran a wet-weather timetable from the first bell. Recess and lunch were taken indoors, and by the afternoon the corridors smelled of damp jumpers.

Not every class started with its own teacher. One of the two Year 4 teachers had taken extended leave over the summer, her replacement was not due to start until the following Monday, and the class spent its first three days with a relief teacher working from someone else's plans. A smaller number of children had transferred in from the one-teacher schools further up the valley. Staff had been told to keep an eye on them at lunchtime.

The school counsellor, who visited New Norfolk Primary one day a week, began the year with a list of eleven children she had been asked to see. One of them was Sarah Lahey, nine, beginning Year 4. She was not new to the school. She had been enrolled the previous November, two weeks after the deaths of her parents in Switzerland, and had spent the last five weeks of the 1998 school year in a Year 3 class that already knew why she was there. Her end-of-year report described her as quiet but sharp.

Patrick Lahey dropped Sarah at the gate that morning before taking her brother Oscar on to the high school for his first day of Year 7. Sarah found her new room without help and took a seat by the window. During the morning she asked her teacher why the Year 4 children were not allowed to use the top oval, and was not satisfied with the answer. At lunchtime she sat in the classroom with a library book and did not join the indoor games.

The bell went at five past three. Jane Lahey was waiting under the verandah to walk her granddaughter home, as she would most afternoons that year. The rain did not clear until after dark.