School funding arse-up

After making the 11th hour discovery that all 81 preschools in Canberra are actually estabished and operated as a Joint-Venture – based upon a Ministerial Agreement dated the 28th of October 1944 and still in effect witht he establishment of Amaroo preschool in 2003. The CPS shared this news with the Government and the DET – providing them with copies of the original agreement. This discovery places the fate of Preschools into contract law and outside of the Education Act (2004). The CPS president and Executive Officer were invited by the minister to hear the outcome of the Toward 2020 proposal – BEFORE then press corp. However, as I read here they are being told after the Press Corp – after Principals – after virtually everyone. I would have expected that joint owners of the Preschool would have been before the Principals.
On a brighter note, the DET listened to the CPS request to make child-care available for the Presidents of the Preschool Parent Associations – as these VOLUNTEER joint OWNERS of the Preschools under threat are ALL parents of young children who sacrifice enormous amounts of time, money and energy to keep ALL preschools OPERATING as the community hubs that they are. Oh, by the way the CPS will be told the news at 2:15pm, Preschool Presidents and Teachers will be told at 2:30pm. All the announcements are being made at the Centre for Teching and Learning in Stirling.

Stirling College, I’ve heard.

I’ll be listening in at 2pm but it is crappy with the principals not being at their schools.

No doubt they’ll be shut away at Manning Clark House.

ahh, i wondered why there were a few people sitting outside the la with a save cook banner yesterday..thanks for clearing that up.

wow, finding out melrose’s future a day after its 40th anniversary celebrations would be pretty heart-breaking..

School principals are being locked up in another location at 12:30pm for the announcement. The news will be given to the rest of the public at 2pm. Which means that schools probably won’t even have their principals on site when the students are told they’ve got two weeks to pack up and get out forever.

Oh, and tonight is the 40th anniversary celebration of Melrose Primary School opening. It’s one of the schools proposed for closure in 2006. They hope to dig up the time capsules that were buried at the school by previous generations, before the school is closed and probably bulldozed for redevelopment.

The press conference for the announcements is at 1.45 on Wednesday. Not sure what the embargo time would be.

And nyssa, Cook parents hae organised a week-long daylight-hours vigil outside the Leg Assembly, partly inspired by the year long vigil that saved their school from the last round of closures.

Oops, went to look elsewhere and hit “say it!”.

I think that they will be released either late or early – for some people to not make a comment until Barr or Chief Numpty have safely left the ACT.

Or have their phones diverted to a poor underlings.

The funds were applied for last year and approved this year. Chief Numpty accepted those funds knowing he was releasing his “hit list” in the same month.

He’s just after the money, not the betterment of ACT Govt schools.

Wednesday will be an interesting day.

Although yesterday I did see a representative from Cook PS sitting outside the LA.

The grants started to get withheld or redistributed once they started listing schools to possibly close. Not that it stopped them all, but it stopped some.

So, think they’ll make the announcement after 3.30?

Can I just comment that I thought the Save Giralang Primary School mission was a bit scary. “Meet at Kaleen Highschool at 7pm – wear all black”. What?!

Hm – well if they can’t close pre-schools this year, Dickson College is off the agenda, and they can’t close schools with big Fed Gov grants, how many are left to close down. Wedensday will be very interesting.