Zed earmarks schools for re-opening

DMD – Cook school was at 97% capacity which was higher than either Aranda or Macquarie. Cook also demonstrated continuing enrolements which would keep it at capacity.

The closure of this school meant more demountable structures to be put in at Aranda which suggests they did not have the space to deal with extra students anyway.

The distance to be travelled is not such a big deal to a man of such grand stature as yourself although to a child an extra 500m-1km is a big deal. Throw in a couple of major roads and this can be quite dangerous to a young child. The hours many people work now means children need to be dropped off at school well prior to school starting and being in before school care. Just more cost associated with having kids.

Bindubi street does not have any sort of under/overpass meaning kids have to cross the road. There is no safer option. There is one crossing Redfern St altough the placement of this means children still then need to cross Lachlan Street to get to the school.

Stay on the drugs dude you’re commenting on something you have no idea about.

BerraBoy68 said :

For the schools argument, so what if little Johnny or Jane has to walk an extra 500 meters to school?! Think if the extra exercise they are getting.

In some suburbs, the nearest public primary school is now over 45 minutes walk away, across major roads. Either give us a school, or give us a primary school bus service. Add to that the Priority Enrolment Area pre-school being two suburbs in the opposite direction to the Priority Enrolment Area primary school, and getting everyone where they need to be at 9am is not a trivial whinge. It means buying an extra car, or one parent not working just so they can taxi everyone around town.

And it will affects lots more people than it did in 2006. ABS stats showed our local school would have been at close to full capacity by 2011, but the ACT Government didn’t even respond to this fact when they released their decision at the end of the “community consultation” on the school closures.

DMD – you’re right but this is the bigger Canberra problem.. ACT Folk are so spoilt they believe the space time continuum doesn’t apply here. For example: the distance between belco and Tugger’s is simply to far to traverse to get to work in time. Fair dinkum, 30 min’s travel in the scheme of thing is peanuts. For the schools argument, so what if little Johnny or Jane has to walk an extra 500 meters to school?! Think if the extra exercise they are getting.

And yes I have kids. If their current school ever closes my wife and I won’t whine about community or distance, I’d just teach them “that’s life kids, things change get used to it”. And think of the positives, if a school closes due to it not being viable (Thumper – point taken, well made) it simply provides kids the opportunity to make new friends. Keeping the old ones who don’t go to the new school just requires extra effort.

If the students are there, the schools should be reopened. If not, then no.

Simple as that.

Having lived near Cook previously for a while and knowing the area well…I can’t see how any students in the area would be far from either Macquarie or Aranda Primary, really.

Yep, the libs are a useless pack of infighting fools. EXCEPT I hasten to add for Andrea Tokaji and Steve Dozspot. Steve been a family friend for ages through the Canberra soccer fraternity and is a good bloke, honestly.

I don’t know Andrea though but I have to say I find her quite attractive. I can’t vote for her (wrong electorate) but hope she gets in as I’d like to see more of her (and less of the other currently elected libs). And what’s with the group pic’s on the Lib’s webpage? Andrea must be siting on chair to be same hight as the others -she’s about 6 foot 4 (Mmmm, very Amazon-ish!)

Swaggie said :

It’s got to be a better ‘policy’ than grandly announcing “no more school closures” as their recent ads were doing – A Hollow policy if ever there was one. This bickering, in fighting, and pathetic bunch of Liberals are beyond electable anyway…. they can have all the “musings’ they like…

Unfortunately, since Labor has managed to make so many people in Canberra annoyed, partially because of incompetence on the party’s part and partially because Canberrans tend to be a bunch of spoiled whingers, there’s a good chance this silly alternative will get in.

Silly, silly times ahead, people…

It’s got to be a better ‘policy’ than grandly announcing “no more school closures” as their recent ads were doing – A Hollow policy if ever there was one. This bickering, in fighting, and pathetic bunch of Liberals are beyond electable anyway…. they can have all the “musings’ they like…

peterh said :

MrMagoo said :

Play devils advocate here, what happens to those community organisations that have just been told they have space at the above mentioned former school sites like Cook.. Seems to me you’d please one community only to upset another.

Anyway, good luck Zeddy

mt neighbor is to be ripped down, don’t know what happens to the preschool next door.

The preschool reamains open. One of my kids goes there.

emd said :

Clearly there’s a case for small schools in rural residential areas like Hall and Tharwa.
The community at Cook are passionately in support of their school, so there’s another obvious one. I hope that these schools do re-open, there will be lots of happy families there.

But it would be interesting to see the Liberals’ justification for choosing which schools to re-open. Is it just about which community looks the most like they’d change their votes based on the school re-opening? I hope it’s more than just that. There needs to be consideration given to how many children are in a given area, and how many other schools service the area. In Chifley/Pearce, we now have NO school within walking distance, and we don’t have school buses to take children to & from public primary schools elsewhere.

Easy justification there, Cook and Flynn still had decent student numbers in the region of 200+ students. Lyons and Melrose Primary schools were never going to be viable because they simply did not have the student numbers to support the schools. From memory they both had about 100 students, if that. I fully support closing schools that just don’t have the numbers in city areas, and it was always going to be the case where some schools needed to close, it was just rediculous that they decided to close schools in advance of having the need to do so.

As for no school in walking distance, they might have survived if people in the area actually sent their children to the local school. Keeping a school open with 90 odd pupils just so they can walk to school is crazy, most children have mummy and daddy drop them off in the morning these days anyway.

As for the promise to reopen the schools, I think the length of time in which these buildings have gone unmaintained and neglected may ultimately prevent them from being reopened. It’s often difficult to fix previous governments fckups!

I note the lack of any costings in Zed’s announcement. Is he hoping that the government will provide the numbers for him so that he can get round to releasing the actual policy?