School ditches traditional bell for AC/DC and Muppets

A school north of Auckland has hit a sour note with some neighbours after switching its traditional school bell to a bit of rock 'n' roll and other classics to signal the start and end of class and breaks.

It has sparked two opposing petitions: one to keep the music, and one to make the music stop.

Warkworth's Te Kura O Puhinui introduced the new system several years back, but recently received a petition signed by some neighbours calling the music noise pollution.

Principal of Te Kura O Puhinui, Karney Dawson, told Checkpoint the students and parents love the musical alerts, and they have made adjustments to their sound setup to try to help out, but they have decided to keep the musical bell system.

'Thunderstruck' by AC/DC among the most popular, but the Muppets song 'Mah Na Mah Na', was another on the regular playlist.

"We got some student feedback," Dawson said, ... "about 95 percent said 'we want it to stay' - they just love it. They love the music over the bells.

"When we ask them, they say it brings them joy, it's a bit of a celebration of fun, and it's just a point of difference, and the parents actually really like it too."

The first and last alert songs are played for the beginning of the school day just before 9am, and at the end of the day, at 3pm.

"One of the comments from the parents is that their child loves it, and they sing it on the car trip home," Dawson said.

A noise measurement was taken at the school, organised by one of the complainants, but the school had been told by the man who carried out the testing that the noise from the children in the playground had measured as noisier than the music, and the music was within the acceptable levels, he said.

But staff had done some thinking about the complaints anyway, and had made some changes.

"We're a school that's got a strong sense of community, and we want to connect with our community and we also want to be good to our neighbours - I mean it's the values that are in school.

"So we certainly approached the concern and we lowered the volume, we shortened the music length, we're going to adjust one of the towers - one of the speakers.

"But at the end of the day our core business is our students, and they love it, and they want it to stay music. And so we're going to obviously keep the music. And we've obviously seen from the outpouring of the community that they also love it, but we do want to be good neighbours so we did try a couple of things to resolve it."

There was strong support for it, Dawson said.

"The community have managed to put together a Spotify list of all the songs that they think we should put on the bells - but I think we're going to get out some Christmas treats for the last couple of weeks for school.

"I think with the noise that's been generated about this over the last week, it's actually made the children even more appreciative that we're a unique school, we try different things and we do what we can for our tamariki."

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