By CASEY NEILL
“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.”
He said the original plan was to complete the upgrade in one step but it was split in two without consultation.
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 a significant amount of money promised to us in our master planning.
“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.
“For specialist studies like art, food technology, music – the facilities are very poor and students just don’t have the same options as they would have if we had funding.
“We need more senior school space, and the rest of the specialist areas done.”
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.
“The Victorian Coalition Government is balancing the capital and maintenance needs of more than 1500 government schools across Victoria.”
