One Mile State School students forced off campus by Gympie floods

More than 150 students at Gympie’s One Mile State School are being shuttled to another school after the February floods severely damaged almost a dozen classrooms.

Almost half of One Mile State School’s student cohort have been displaced to another school following the devastating floods which damaged almost a dozen rooms.

The school’s prep, year 1 and year 3 students are being bussed to Gympie Central State School following the floods, which has left buildings bare and playgrounds fenced off.

Eleven rooms, including nine classrooms and the music room, were destroyed by floodwaters.

Some of the damaged rooms were more than 40m back from the road and several metres above it.

Principal Stuart Bell said on Wednesday 157 of the school’s 379 students were being educated off campus.

He was unaware of ever having to send students off campus following other disasters in the school’s past, including a fire which gutted three classrooms.

The school was a “little bit quieter”, he said, but there was still no shortage of activities keeping students busy.

An aerial shot of One Mile School at the peak of the flood on Sunday, February 27, 2022 taken by Infinity Flights Photography, which shows the extent of the disaster which has forced almost half of the student cohort to be bussed to another school.

“We have a number of activities – dodge ball up in the hall, hand ball around the buildings … the kids do,” Mr Bell said.

“Break times funnily enough aren’t as quiet as we thought they would be.”

Students were not the only members of One Mile making the trip across to Gympie Central, either.

“Each student is with their normal class room teacher, teacher aide and support staff.”

Mr Bell said the aim was to get them back on the One Mile campus full time “as soon as possible”, but that might be the start of term two.

“To my knowledge (it’s) the most classes that have been affected,” Mr Bell said.

One Mile State School Principal Stuart Bell shows Education Minister Grace Grace around the damaged school as part of a wider tour by the Minister of the Wide Bay’s flood-affected schools.

“The extent of the damage here, we weren’t able to relocate all those classrooms.

“We were anticipating it possibly going into another two classrooms.”

Touring One Mile as part of a broader visit across the Wide Bay, Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace said the State Government was exploring options on how to make the school more flood resilient in the future.

“It’s almost unbelievable to think there was that much water running through this school and that it rose that high,” she said.

Ms Grace said the plan was to not repeat the mistakes of before in repairing the schools affected by floods across the southeast will run into tens of millions of dollars.