School in crisis

By Shaun Inguanzo
ONE man stormed out in disgust from a fiery meeting between parents and staff of Ferntree Gully Primary School after revelations it was facing closure.
Ferntree Gully Primary School last week revealed to parents of its 104 students that its enrolment figures were on a downward spiral, forcing the school to look for a survival lifeline.
The school council will meet in term four this year to vote on a possible amalgamation with neighbouring Wattleview primary school.
The plan so far involves the school abandoning its historical Dorset Road site by the beginning of the 2007 school year, with a transition year in 2006.
In a special meeting with parents last Thursday evening the school explained that despite its research it could not identify the problem causing the low enrolment trend.
Several parents spoke out, blaming ongoing and damaging rumours of the school’s closure as the source for potential students being enrolled elsewhere.
School principal Pauline Fargie acknowledged the rumours but said they did not change the current situation.
One parent, Dean Thompson, angrily left the meeting midway after his frustrations reached boiling point.
Mr Thompson and wife Tanya enrolled their daughter at Ferntree Gully Primary School this year and were fuming that their child may be ‘lost in the system’ at a bigger school.
“Why talk about closing it,” he said.
“Why not talk about saving it?”
Mr Thompson criticised the school for not revealing its plans earlier.
He referred to a graph displayed during the presentation which highlighted the downward spiral of student numbers from more than 300 students in 1992 to just 104 in 2005.
“That information has been there for years, why hasn’t it been made available for people (earlier)?”
Mr Thompson said he would battle to keep the school open.
“I will fight for it as hard as I can.”
Ms Fargie told parents that under amalgamation, children would have a larger range of resources and curricular activities available to them.
She said the State Government provided scaleddown resources to small schools, making it increasingly difficult for the school to provide resources on par with larger schools.
She said next year the school would have the equivalent of less than five full time staff including a principal who would doubleup as a teacher.
Ms Fargie said children would have a restricted play area in 2006 due to low staff numbers which could not patrol the whole school adequately at lunchtimes.
Ferntree Gully MP Anne Eckstein said it was a ‘sad situation’ for both the school and parents but added that declining enrolments were reflective of Ferntree Gully which she described as an ‘ageing area’.
Ferntree Gully Liberal Party candidate Nick Wakeling blamed a maintenance backlog of $163,000 on a lack of State Government funding.