Save Tharwa School

The Governments agenda for the use of the closed school sites in the ACT was clearly transparent at the Tuggeranong meeting this week. While we sat feeling empowered by whiteboard markers and the chance to have a public voice, government cogs have already turned on the Mt Neighbour Primary and Macarthur Preschool sites with ‘preferred options’ of aged care and childcare being issued in the first five minutes of the presentation. While the government views this as a chance to raise revenue by selling parcels of land and renting buildings to businesses which supply community services who can afford the rent it seems unlikely we will see the sites retained for ground level community use. This will add more pain to the tragedy of the whole school closure process.

It became clear through Monday’s meeting that there is a huge shortfall of affordable space in Tuggeranong for non-profit community groups to house their volunteer administration and workshop space. The list is set to get even longer with groups like the Tuggeranong Band, who currently rehearse with their 50 member group in the Village Creek Primary Hall, preparing for a future with no home base.
If we want to live for a sustainable future, the catchphrase “Live Globally, Act Locally” should be heard across Canberra. Yet the ACT government is on the verge of failing to provide its citizens with the space for local action and community education to be held. We, the public, know it is worth valuing, worth subsidizing and worth fighting for as we face government decisions which will chop the hearts out of our suburbs and fail to provide much needed community housing in suburbs that need it.

For decades, local governments across the globe have used tax revenue to provide funding and buildings for community groups to facilitate programs and house the swarms of warm hearted volunteers who work in their communities, providing education and care from within the community, for the community. And it works, I have felt it as one of 350 volunteers in a community school in Vancouver.

So join us as we demand from this process, our “Option” for the future use of the closed school sites in the ACT. That we be provided with subsidized community space in each of the closed school sites, to fulfill the role of a society in the 21st century which grows community not weeds it away.

Jane Irving

From Canberra times
David Wright

The ACT Government’s approach to the problem of spare capacity in some of our schools resulted in the closure of more than 20 schools and many disenfranchised communities. It didn’t have to be that way.

The approach used last year tried to address a relatively minor fiscal problem at the systemic or strategic level. However, the solutions had their most destructive and traumatic manifestations at the local level.

How different the outcome could have been socially, educationally, politically, administratively and financially had the ACT Government adopted a bottom-up or grassroots approach. It could have shared the systemic fiscal problem with the electorate and, in partnership with the local communities, arrived at innovative and constructive solutions.

The ACT Government is now embarking on the second phase of its plan the disposal of those closed schools. Members of those local communities that lost their schools can be forgiven for treating with some cynicism the Government’s protestations that the school closures were not simply a land grab. That cynicism can only have been reinforced by the brief issued by the Department of Territory and Municipal Services to Purdon Associates to carry out consultations on this second phase.

The process proposed repeats last year’s mistakes. Not only does it fail to acknowledge the continuing relevance of local community interests, the consultants’ brief is pitched at arm’s length from those local community interests. This is no accident. It appears deliberate and, again, it doesn’t have to be so.

The proposed process cannot be legitimised by setting strategic direction or controlling access at district or regional level and by watering down local input through the involvement of ACT-wide groups such as councils, peak industry groups and developers. It is important that the consultants be given the opportunity to engage in partnerships with local communities to produce local solutions to what are again essentially local community problems.

“Community use” sites are identified in the planning process for community uses at various levels in the urban hierarchy. These include primary schools and preschools. Most objective observers would agree that the use of community-use sites within local catchments are best determined by the local community not by politicians buffered by a regional electoral base or by bureaucrats in central departments with narrowly defined functions.

Why not turn this whole process around? Let’s make it proactive, constructive, imaginative, engaging and enduring.

Why not harness the community energy that was generated in such a negative fashion last year and put it to productive use? Why not encourage local community groups, so disaffected by last year’s events, for example, to establish a local community company to manage the future of those assets in the interest of the local community?

It is not too difficult to imagine a new form of neighbourhood community centre which involves a range of community uses, including health, child care, recreation. meeting rooms and even some form of education use, such as Education Minister Andrew Barr’s early childhood model as espoused over the past week.

These largely non-income producing facilities and services could be subsidised by more commercial land uses including professional offices, small businesses and even restaurants. No doubt room could be found for some housing or aged-care accommodation but this would be on terms defined by the local community. This is but one model. There must be a plethora of others.

If the ACT Government chooses to think outside the square, we need not repeat last year’s mistakes. However, as presently conceived, the brief precludes the consultants from exploring such opportunities.

If Chief Minister Jon Stanhope and his colleagues have been honest about their motives, then they can be satisfied with the savings that the school closures produced.

If they can approach the problem of the use of these community assets in partnership with those affected, rather than deliberately restricting their participation, then we have some prospect of securing outcomes with a sense of community ownership and a genuine legitimacy.

The current brief before Territory and Municipal Services needs to be modified to allow Purdon Associates to use their expertise in social and land-use planning to tackle the problem constructively and imaginatively and produce positive and enduring outcomes.

Who knows, such a process might even form the basis of a new community development paradigm and that would put a feather in the caps of Stanhope, Barr and Municipal Services Minister John Hargreaves.

David Wright is a former director of the National Capital Plan.

From ABC News

The Territory and Municipal Services Minister John Hargreaves says the ACT Government has no pre-conceived ideas on the future uses of Canberra’s vacant school sites.

Mr Hargreaves announced Purdon Associates will be the group responsible for consulting with the public on the use of the sites, and will report back to the Government.

He says a final decision will not be made on the vacant sites until early next year.

“Of course we have absolutely no pre-conceptions,” Mr Hargreaves said.

“We’ve given over five different models for how the buildings could be used.”

“But if people can come up with another one that’s even better.”

Save Our Schools has accused the ACT Government of financial duplicity over its school closure program. SOS spokesperson, Trevor Cobbold, said that the Budget estimates clearly show that the ACT Government duped the community on school closures.

“The Budget Papers show that the school closure program was based on a financial ‘con’ trick - perhaps the greatest financial confidence trick in the history of ACT self-government.

“Last year, the Government told us that the ACT could no longer afford neighbourhood schools because it faced an $80 million deficit in 2006-07 and a further large deficit in 2007-08. According to the Government, the ACT faced an unsustainable financial situation.

“Now we find that there will actually be a $40 million surplus in 2006-07 – a turnaround of $120 million from last year. Further surpluses are estimated at $103 million in 2007-08, $52 million in 2008-09, $61 million in 2009-10 and $102 million in 2010-11.

“We have had financial surpluses in each of the last six years. It is hardly evidence of financial exigency. The Government simply invented a deficit that enabled it to ignore major education and other community needs and justify its pre-determined school closure policy.”

Mr. Cobbold said that families subjected to school closures were entitled to be extremely angry at being ‘conned’ by the Government.

“Many families have lost access to a local school and they have lost the choice of attending a small school. The school closure program is forcing over 2000 students to travel longer distances to school and many face increased traffic safety risks. Families are experiencing major disruption and increased transport costs. All this is happening because of a financial confidence trick.”

From ABC News

The ACT Government’s decision to withhold documents relating to its closure of several public schools in Canberra is being challenged in an ACT Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

The Opposition Education Spokeswoman Vicki Dunne and a parent of the now closed Mount Neighbour Primary School have filed freedom of information requests.

They want access to up to 200 pages of documents including cabinet papers giving details of the Government’s plan to close 23 schools.

The ACT Administrative Appeals Tribunal has heard that the Chief Minister’s Department and the Education Department certified that the release of some of the documents would be contrary to the public interest.

The hearing is expected to continue for the next three days.

From ABC News

The parents at Tharwa School which closed last year say the A-C-T Department of Education has botched the move.

The school transition reports written for each Tharwa student to provide a seamless switch to the new school have been lost.

The former Tharwa School Board Chairman Karim Haddad says some students including his own aren’t getting the support they need.

“I’ve just found out on Friday, after chasing it up for a couple of months, where our kids transition plans were,” he said.

“The Department informed me they’ve lost them.”

“They should have been there the first day of the first term this year, but they still can’t work out where they are.”

Mr Haddad says parents are unimpressed after being promised the disruption on their children would be kept to a minimum.

“Teachers haven’t been given the benefit of the briefing from the previous teachers,” he said.

“They spent a lot of time writing down what the individual kids needs were to make sure they weren’t being disrupted by going to the next school and they lost them.”

“So the kids had to start from the beginning and in a lot of cases aren’t getting the support they need.”