SCHOOLS in Melton and Moorabool are crying out for a funding boost in the lead-up to next month’s state budget.
Melton Labor MP Don Nardella is leading the charge for urgent funding for Melton Specialist School to replace 24 portable classrooms with a permanent school building.
He also hopes funding will be announced to design and build new primary schools in the growth areas of Arnolds Creek and Eynesbury, and to rebuild Bacchus Marsh Secondary School as per its master plan.
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Melton Specialist School council president Elle Gillard said enrolment numbers continued to climb, but amenities had never been improved.
“The school has about 180 students from Melton and Bacchus Marsh with disabilities, including autism and intellectual disabilities,” she said.
“It doesn’t give the school that closeness as if it was a building. If we were to get a new school we would end up with portables, but not a whole school of portables. We always advocate to get more funding and more improvements, but whether anything gets done is another issue. We really need a new school.”
Mr Nardella said there had been no funding to improve the electorate’s schools in the past 2½ years.
“We just had the 40-year celebration of sending a human to the moon, but yet we’re teaching our students in portables,” he said. “That should not be occurring; we’re not a poor country.
“There’s a block of land at Arnolds Creek for a primary school which [the government] bought at the end of the last financial year, but nothing has come of that.”
Western Metropolitan MP Andrew Elsbury told the Weekly he wanted funding for new primary and secondary schools in Melbourne’s west. “As we know, people are continuing to move into the western suburbs so we need more school projects to be funded.”
The government yesterday announced $51.5 million for school maintenance statewide, including $80,000 for Melton Specialist School. The budget will be handed down on May 7.
