A Star News Group ou o up Pu PPublication ub blliicca
12 May 2014 14
Caring for the community ity
Hartung’s flying debut
Property liftout
PAGE 10
SPORT
INSIDE
Monday, 12 May 2014
CHIC AND GLAMOROUS PAGE 2
Black hole schools St John’s got talent DANDENONG’S St John’s College was the focus of its own celebrations last week. Students including Anna and Jully from African Sisters Dance Group wowed in the Talent Quest as part of the annual St John’s Day, on Tuesday. See page 52 for more from the event.
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“BITTERLY disappointing” is how principals are describing a budget black hole for Greater Dandenong schools. Lyndhurst MP Martin Pakula said “not a single cent, let alone a dollar” had been allocated to schools in the electorate in the 2014’15 State Budget. “The community has been deceived,” Chandler Park Primary principal Peter Paul said last week. The Keysborough school has been waiting for funding to complete a merger with Maralinga Primary started five years ago. “We cannot simply continue the way we are,” he said. “We’re running across both campuses. We try to operate as one school. We are one school. “That places a strain on planning. That places a strain on time. “It’s a situation that beggars belief.” Mr Paul said the school needed $5.7 million to add more classrooms and art room, library and administration facilities. “That means we would bring every child onto the Chandler campus,” he said. “They would relinquish the Maralinga site so the government gets the site back. “I think one would balance the other quite well.” Mr Paul has since met with Education Minister Martin Dixon at the school, to no avail. “Our bid to complete the school has gone on the cutting room floor,” he said. “We’ve had enough.” The school board is due to meet tomorrow night (Tuesday) to decide a course of action.
Keysborough College principal Heather Lindsay said the school was waiting on about $30 million to complete a redevelopment that also started five years ago. “We were a school that formed after four schools merged,” she said. “We’ve had virtually half of our finding. We’ve completed half the school. “We’re a school of contrast we have fantastic new buildings and then we have really poor older buildings.” Ms Lindsay said the two campuses had rooms that leaked, lacked natural light, were draughty and needed new cabling. “They’re not really fit for teaching in, and they need replacing,” she said. Dandenong MP John Pandazopoulos was disappointed there was no funding for stage four of Dandenong High School’s redevelopment. “The school’s been hoping for funding for the last two budgets,” he said. He said most school funding was going to growth corridors or marginal seats. “They can find money like the $18 million for a school in Frankston which, as the Member for Frankston said, did not even know it was getting the funding and did not ask for it,” he said. A spokeswoman for Mr Dixon said the budget delivered $1.6 billion for education as well as $500 million to build 12 new schools and upgrade more than 70 existing schools. “Labor’s so-called Victorian Schools Plan left us a $420 million school maintenance backlog which we are now having to fix,” he said.
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