Government’s new school zones splits up best friends

The plans, hopes and dreams of two best friends going off to high school together have been torn asunder at a politician’s stroke of a pen on new school zones.

• Adelaide High: larger school, smaller zone
• Value of Adelaide school zones revealed
• Adelaide Botanic High takes shape

The plans, hopes and dreams of two best friends going off to high school together have been torn asunder.

Willow Woodward and Sayde Meakes, 10-year-old bestie classmates in Year 5 at Richmond Primary School, were convinced they would remain inseparable as they charted their paths through high school.

But all their best-laid plans changed with a stroke of a politician’s pen last Monday.

What sealed their separate fates was that Sayde’s family lives on the “wrong’’ side of South Rd in Richmond and Willow’s family lives on the “right” side in Ashford.

Ironically, Sayde, who lives closer to Adelaide High School, has been excluded under the new zones while Willow, who is further away, has not.

Now Sayde, who is just 2.6km from Adelaide High, will have to catch two buses and walk a long way to get to Underdale High School every day.

The girls are battling to come to terms with having to go their separate ways.

“This makes me feel angry, frustrated and sad. I’ve been with Willow in primary school and we talk all the time about going to high school together and what we’ll be doing there,” says Sayde.

“But then all of a sudden you just get told we can’t stay together because people just changed all the rules at the last minute. It’s going to be sad now that we have been forced to go our separate ways.”

Willow is also inconsolable. “I’m very sad because both Sayde and I alway dreamt that as best friends were would be able to build our futures together.

“I feel so disappointed. Sayde and I alway talked about what we will do in high school together and the type of friends we would make to join the two of us.

“But now one signature has torn apart our high school future together — and that makes me so sad.

“Now Sayde, as well as a lot of other friends, will be forced to go to a school much further away which is really not fair,” she says.

Richmond Primary School students Sayde-Rose Meakes, 10, and Willow Woodward, 9, had plans to go to Adelaide High School together. Picture: AAP/Roy VanDerVegt

The girls’ mothers are also upset by the zoning decision and the way it was done.

Shaylie Meakes says she’s “obviously very frustrated and angered” by the last-minute change because the government had, in the past, promised the children in those areas that they could attend Adelaide High and Botanic High.

“Now that’s been taken away — and taken away too easily, given that the distance that many of the suburbs that have been kicked off are the closest suburbs to Adelaide High,” she says.

“I just cannot believe that we can’t send Sayde to the school that is closest to our home. It’s just crazy”

Their home in Richmond is in easy walking distance to Adelaide High.

“But now we suddenly find we’ve been zoned for Underdale, which is almost double the distance and it will take two buses and three walks for Sayde to get there and back home each day,” Ms Meakes says.

Helena Woodward says she accepts that governments at times have to make tough decisions.

“But my main issue here is the lack of consultation with parents and the community and the fact that this starts next year, meaning there is no transition period giving families time to make plans for such a huge change.”

Ms Woodward sees the move as “highly unreasonable and unfair”, arguing that it’s “quite disturbing” that the government can make such major decision “arbitrarily without any public consultation whatsoever”.

Ms Woodward finds it irksome that Willow and Sayde won’t be able to go the same high school.

“At this age they spend a lot of time talking about the future and every time we drive past Adelaide High we talk about what a great time they are going to have together there.”

She says the decision has not only come as a shock to Willow and Sayde but to families across the west.

“It’s something that every parent I know in the community, whether they’re directly impacted or not, is talking about a lot,” she says. “And they’re not happy’’.