By CASEY NEILL
FIRES, graffiti and squatters have plagued the abandoned Southvale Primary School site for more than two years, and neighbours have had enough.
But the Education Department won’t say what’s in store for the Noble Park property.
Glenda Green’s property backs onto the Athol Road site.
“They’ve just left it abandoned,” she said.
“I was president of the mother’s club at one stage. My three children went there.
“We worked so hard to raise the money to build the hall.
“To let it go like this….”
Ms Green recently found about 10 teens setting a fire in the grounds after smelling smoke.
“And one night we heard this explosion, and I don’t know what they put into a rubbish bin but the rubbish bin was just melted down,” she said.
“We’ve had people in there smashing things.
“It’s been going on since it was vacated.
“Not long before they closed it down they put in a kitchen.
“They could have made it short-term housing. They could have done anything with it.”
Debris and graffiti litter the ransacked classrooms and hall, there’s rubbish throughout the grounds, trees are flattened, and library books from a box labelled “for Fiji” are strewn throughout the buildings.
“It was such a lovely school,” Ms Green said.
“It’s just a wicked waste of our money.”
She has regularly called police to the site, and said security officers sometimes turn up after the event.
Ms Green thinks a park would be a perfect fit for the site.
“There’s a lovely playground there,” she said.
She’s been in contact with Federal Isaacs MP Mark Dreyfus, the State Education Department and City of Greater Dandenong to seek action, to no avail.
In a statement almost identical to a letter in response to Ms Green’s concerns from November last year, Education Department spokesman Simon Craig last week said it had declared the site surplus to education requirements.
He said this required the department to offer it first to other government departments, then the council and finally the public.
Mr Craig would not tell the Journal what stage the process was at or the timeline on plans, but the council confirmed it had not been approached about the site.
In response to Journal questions about how the Education Department was protecting the site and surrounding homes from vandals, Mr Craig said: “All we can add at this stage is that the site is being electronically monitored.”
Visit dandenong.starcommunity.com.au for more shocking photos of the damage at the site.
