Premier Mike Baird spruiks advantages of new Manly Vale Public School plans

PREMIER  Mike Baird has thrown his support behind a controversial plan to take over bushland in favour of increasing the occupancy at a local school.

NSW Premier Mike Baird speaking during the NSW Liberal State Council in Sydney. Picture: AAP.

PREMIER  Mike Baird has thrown his support behind a controversial plan to take over bushland in favour of increasing the occupancy at a local school.

In the Manly Vale Public School’s newsletter earlier this month, Mr Baird said 40 new classrooms were on track to be built early next year.

The revamped plans have been touted as a compromise by the Education Department, which claims it has given back 0.3ha of the 0.8ha of surrounding bushland it previously proposed taking.

New plans show the P building which has been added so the M building did not encroach further into the bush.

In March, an application lodged by the department to add 40 classrooms put parents and residents at odds.

It would have allowed for the school to grow from 400 pupils to 1000. Parents said the school was grossly overcrowded.

Stephen Hancock, a former president of the school council, has been pushing for new infrastructure since his children started at the school six years ago. He praised the compromise.

“We were given the $20 million in 2014, which, in itself, is remarkable,” he said. “But the fact that Harbord is almost built, which got the money at the same time as us, and construction has started at Curl Curl, which wasn’t even in the picture, it is time to get moving.”

He said three new demountables were needed next year.

“The demographics of the area are not slowing down,” he said. “We will have about 520 students next year and had 180 in 2008. The way it is going, the school’s population will have trebled in the 10 years since 2008.”

Previous plans for Manly Vale Public School showed building M extending out.

But former principal David Tribe argues the new plans are still bad for the environment. He said they should have been shown to parents, nearby residents and the school before being released.

“Correspondence from the department states, ‘the Department of Education acknowledges the importance of the nature area to Manly Vale School and is committed to allowing greater access to the nature area’,” he said.

“How can this happen if the department is planning to destroy this area? The school’s nature area has been used for many years as a unique teaching resource to teach the basic curriculum in a practical way to hundreds of students.”

He said a large number of submissions had called for the school to be built up, not out, as is the case in Harbord and Neutral Bay.

Trees marked for removal next to Manly Vale Public school. Supplied

Mr Hancock dismissed the notion the school should be multistorey, saying it didn’t fit with the amenity of the area.

“It is already going up,” he said. “It will be double storey, whereas it is now single storey.

“It is a bushland school and urban high-rise isn’t sensible for the area ... It is designed to be in keeping with the area.”

Mr Baird said in the newsletter that the department had worked “with the school community, parent bodies, community groups and other stakeholders — who all hold different views on the proposed redevelopment”. He said it had “come to a compromise that, I believe, will deliver a great outcome for students and the local area”.

Mr Baird argued the revised design “continues Manly Vale’s proud history of bush and environmental awareness, while delivering top-quality facilities that your children and future students deserve”.

He said the new design minimised potential impact on bushland, and said Planning Minister Rob Stokes was looking at ways to improve the conservation status of surrounding bushland.