Ultimo community slams Department’s plan for local school

BY CHRISTOPHER HARRIS
The Ultimo community have slammed Department of Education plans to demolish and rebuild Ultimo Public School, with a petition receiving 514 signatures in just 12 days.

Collecting more than 500 signatures means that the Education Minister must respond to the concerns raised by the petition in parliament.

The Ultimo Pyrmont Education Campaign Committee launched the campaign when they found that the Education Department was continuing with plans to find an alternate site for the school while the existing one was redeveloped.

They rushed to get the 500 signatures required to table the matter before NSW parliament, because they suspected that the department could begin planning to relocate the students “within weeks”.

The planned new school on the existing site would cater for only 700 students instead of the 1000 capacity previously planned.

This was despite the fact the community had continually told the department and the Education Minister they needed a larger school to cater for the area’s rapidly growing population.

During the NSW state election earlier this year, the government promised a new larger school would be built.

The City of Sydney Council had agreed to sell the site to the government at a reduced price because of the cost of remediation.

However, the government reneged on its promise because the estimated cost of $50 million for remediation of the site was double the initial estimate, rendering it as an unviable cost.

In June, Fairfax Media revealed that the government had ignored its own advice and opted for the most expensive remediation option.

Now the local community is slamming the proposal to demolish and rebuild on the current site.

Mary Mortimer, convenor of the Committee who raised the petition, told City Hub that demolishing a building that had had $10 million spent on it in the past 15 years did not make economic sense.

“The department and minister have slammed the door on anything other than knocking down the existing school and building a new one. We say forget demolishing the existing school, it is a shocking waste of money,” she said.

Ms Mortimer said that it was not just an education issue, but also a broader one of planning for the area’s future.

“We have to get this through not only to the Minister for Education, but also the Planning Minister as well as the Premier because there is a responsibility for the NSW government to provide public education. For the Minister for Planning, it is an issuebecause of the nearby Bays Precinct development,” Ms Mortimer said.

“They are also building more dwellings in Darling Harbour, several buildings in Ultimo and Pyrmont such as the Kennedy Building and others are for sale or going up for sale and will ultimately become residential — the department’s calculations have not taken these new dwelling into account [with regards to population increase.”

She told City Hub that the potential demolition could have negative psychological effects for the children who are and have previously attended the school.

“There are many children who are attached to that school, who would be devastated to see it demolished, that is quite an emotionally disturbing experience. Anyone who has anything to do with children are saying that would be a distressing experience.”