Sorry ending!

By Glen Atwell
AFTER 30 years of weekly visits, the City of Greater Dandenong has axed its mobile library service from Darren Reserve in Springvale South.
Coomoora Primary School, Coomoora Secondary College and the Darren Reserve Kindergarten will no longer have access to the mobile literacy resource and have been advised to visit the Springvale Library as an alternative.
The decision has outraged Coomoora Primary School principal Rose Cannizzaro, who believes the Springvale South community was an easy target for council cost-cutting.
“I would hate to think that council has cut the service here because of the non-English-speaking profile of the community,” she said.
“Many residents do not have the confidence or sufficient command of the English language to voice their objections over this matter.”
Keysborough South Ward councillor Peter Brown said councillors were notified of proposed changes to the mobile library service at a recent briefing meeting, but removing Darren Reserve from the schedule was not on the list.
“For some reason the Dandenong council was not given the courtesy of being notified that the Darren Road service was being removed,” he said.
“I’ll be putting a resolution to council at the next meeting to have the Darren Road service reinstated within two weeks.”
Keysborough Ward councillor Roz Blades said she would support the reinstatement of Darren Reserve to the mobile library service schedule.
“The reaction of Coomoora Primary School and its school council tells me the Darren Reserve service is very important to the local community,” Cr Blades said.
“I’ll be supporting the motion to have it reinstated.”
Coomoora Primary School has an impressive literacy record, with 90 per cent of its students successfully completing the state-wide Premier’s Reading Challenge last year.
“Tim Holding (Member for Lyndhurst) visited our school to congratulate the students. Our results were the best in the state,” Ms Cannizzaro said.
Coomoora Primary School was notified about the possible removal of the mobile library two weeks before the end of the 2006 school year.
But, Ms Cannizzaro said she ex-plained how valuable the service was and thought this would be the end of the matter.
“I sat with him for an hour and told him how many non-English speaking families use the mobile library as their primary source of literature,” she said.
But one week into the new school year, and after three decades of service, the mobile library visits came to a grinding halt.
“It was a shock to the entire school community,” Ms Cannizzaro said.
“I was taking phone calls from concerned parents and decided it was important that I expressed my disappointment.”
Cr Blades said she was hopeful that the Darren Reserve service would be back up and running sooner rather than later.
“I’m not too sure that two weeks is a realistic time frame, but this is obviously an important issue in the Coomoora school community,” she said.