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Canberra Today 24°/27° | Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Telopea P&C vents their frustration over Manuka land swap

telopea

THE Telopea Park School Parents and Citizens’ Association (Telopea P&C) is deeply disappointed with the position put by Joy Burch at a meeting held this week.

Paul Haesler, President of Telopea P&C, and Jacinda Still, Chair of the Telopea Park School Board, met with Joy on May 27 to discuss the school community’s opposition to the loss of land where the Telopea Park School’s tennis courts currently reside.

“The Minister completely failed to address our concerns about how the school has lost this land and the impact it will have on the school,” Paul said following the meeting.

“The School Board is strongly opposed to the decision to take land away from our school and has serious concerns about the decision-making process,” Jacinda said.

“The Directorate for Education and Training transferred the lease of the land where the tennis courts sit from the school to the Land Development Agency earlier this year without any prior information or consultation of the school community,” Paul said.

“The Government’s intention is to move the MOCCA childcare center to the tennis courts and move the Canberra Services Club to where MOCCA is currently located on Flinders Way.

“During the meeting the Minister made it clear that the land has gone and the school community should now focus on how it will spend the $800,000 allocated to the school by the Land Development Agency as compensation for the loss of land.

“The Minister outlined an absurdly tight timeline including barely six weeks for the school community to be consulted on a 10 year master plan for the future development of the school. She indicated that this plan must be finalized quickly to allow the construction of childcare facilities and the bulldozing of the existing tennis courts as soon as school finishes in December this year.

“MOCCA clearly would prefer to remain in its current location and we strongly support this position. We also know there are other viable alternative sites that could be considered for childcare centers that do not involve reducing the size of our already over crowded school.

“Minister Burch took exception to some of the things I have said about her in the press in recent weeks, including my call for her to resign. But the government has forced us into a political battle by making this decision behind closed doors, with no consultation, no transparency and no accountability. As the government (and Ms Burch in particular) would be well aware, politics is a dirty, dirty game, and I make no apologies for playing the government’s game by the government’s rules. It was clear from our meeting that Minister Burch is either unwilling or unable to stand up in cabinet for the educational needs of the students she is responsible for or for the abilities of schools to service those needs. The Telopea Park P&C have no confidence in her political leadership of the Education and Training Directorate, and we renew our call for her to resign.

“We want to see the decision that led to the loss of the school’s land revisited and reversed, and our community campaign to Save Telopea Sports Fields will continue until that is so,” said Mr Haesler.

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One Response to Telopea P&C vents their frustration over Manuka land swap

Macca says: 29 May 2015 at 12:41 pm

The decision to rob Telopea of its tennis courts is disgraceful. The damage caused by obesity to children is far more than the miserable $800k being offered. Students need more active recreation facilities, not less. Certainly there are other sporting activities that take up less space than tennis, but it will be a dark day indeed when we in Australia declare that land is too valuable to be used for tennis playing at schools.

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