Golden Grove High School given half as much funding to expand by same amount as Glenunga International High
A Golden Grove school has been left begging to meet with the education minister after discovering it would only receive half as much funding as an eastern suburbs institution to cope with an influx of new students when Year 7s are integrated.
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An outer suburban school community is questioning why it will have to take on 400 extra students with only half the funding given to one in Adelaide’s inner east.
Golden Grove High School’s governing council has been trying to secure a meeting with Education Minister John Gardner for two months.
It wants to know why the northeast school is receiving $15.5 million to grow from 1500 to 1900 students, with the addition of Year 7s in 2022 accounting for almost all the projected increase, while Glenunga International High gets $29.2m.
Golden Grove principal Peter Kuss wrote in a newsletter last month that “unfortunately” the school’s original “wishlist” of projects had been costed at $27 million.
He said it would get a new performing arts centre, a middle school building with 18 classrooms, a Year 12 study centre, landscaping, and the removal of all transportable buildings.
But projects that have had to be scrapped were a carpark expansion, an extended and upgraded administration centre, and refurbishments of the home economics and “discovery centre” buildings.
One parent responded on Facebook: “Carpark not in budget, go figure, you can’t even drop off, pick up kids in (the) current (car) park driveway, let along with 300 extra families, teachers.”
An Education Department briefing from July 12 for Education Minister John Gardner acquired under Freedom of Information by the opposition said expanding the capacity of a bigger school like Glenunga required building more specialist areas.
Glenunga has limited open space so needs more multistorey projects that are more expensive, the document said.
But Labor’s assistant education spokesman Blair Boyer said it was “another example of the Liberal Government treating schools in the north and northeast as second-class”.
“The Marshall Government is now forcing schools to beg for the money they need to accommodate those (extra) students,” he said.
Months before losing last year’s election, the former Labor government allocated $10 million to Golden Grove for capital works.
Labor policy was to leave Year 7 students in primary schools.
Mr Gardner said the government had prepared for a “tsunami” of primary students entering high schools.
“The Marshall Liberal Government has made significant investment into capital works at schools across the state, including a further $185 million in this year’s Budget to accommodate both the transition of Year 7 to high school and deal with the tsunami that the former Labor government chose to ignore,” he said.
Golden Grove governing council chairman Martin Kusabs declined to comment until a meeting had been secured with Mr Gardner, whose office has now scheduled one for October 2.