Delvene ready to ‘chain herself to desk’ to save her grandkids’ school
Delvene Cornell has lead a life respecting the law but the former TV star is prepared to chain herself to a desk at her grandkids’ school in a bid to stop the NSW Department of Education shrinking, or shutting down, the small Northern Rivers school.
NSW
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Delvene Cornell has lead a life respecting the law but the former TV star is prepared to chain herself to a desk in an act of civil disobedience which risks arrest.
The desk is in a classroom at Coorabell Public School and Mrs Cornell — formerly Delvene Delaney of Sale of the Century fame and married to John “Strop” Cornell — is determined to stop the NSW Department of Education stripping her grandchildren’s small Northern Rivers school of classrooms and teachers. She said the reduced school would be easier to eventually close down.
It’s an issue across rural NSW. Between 2011 and 2017, 38 schools around NSW were closed, and most were in rural and regional centres. At the same time 16 schools were opened to meet the growing demand in Sydney.
Mrs Cornell and her husband sent their daughter Allira to Coorabell Public in the 1980s, and now two of her daughter’s children attend the school which teaches just 127 students.
The school, which opened in 1891 and is one of the state’s top performers in NAPLAN testing, has six classrooms — four of them demountables — and six teachers.
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But a decision by the NSW Education Department to stop counting the four demountable buildings as classrooms will enforce a cap on enrolments to just 47.
Only the two permanent classrooms — which were built by the Rudd Government’s Building the Education Revolution in 2011 — and an administration building, are counted.
A strict enforcement of the school’s catchment zone for the first time has also meant student numbers have already dropped below 130, allowing the Department to stop the funding of the sixth teacher.
Cornell’s grandchildren, who live just seven minutes away, are one kilometre out of the catchment.
“They want to remove the demountables and close down country schools and is that because they want to send kids to super schools?” Ms Cornell said, adding the demountables had been there for 40 years.
“Parents and teachers are prepared to chain themselves to the desks.”
The defiant grandmother said she and others were prepared for a fight when the government moves in to remove the demountables.
“I did all of my schooling here and it means the world to me to have my children here,” Allira Cornell, 40, said.
Many residents in the Byron hinterland have chosen the school in favour of other smaller schools like Goonengerry because it is on the way to work in nearby towns Bangalow, Mullumbimby and Byron Bay, where their children will be expected to go when the demountables are removed.
Coorabell’s P&C is fundraising to keep the teacher on and pay his salary. P&C President Simon Field said a freedom of information request revealed moving each demountable would cost $140,000 each.
There have been victories for small towns over school closures. In 2014, a campaign by the Moree Plains farming community managed to have the tiny school of Tulloona Public School re-opened a year after it closed its doors.
Grain farmer Michelle said country schools are “the heart of the town” and “it is the only collective point for our community, we don’t have a hall, so it was a huge impact on us.”
Towns like Ellangowan, Millbank, Byabarra, Rouchel, Wollombi and Gates Head have all had their schools closed in recent years.
A parliamentary inquiry into school closures in 2015 criticised the ‘heavy handed’ tactics used in closing schools and that the department did not fully appreciated “the immense value that families and community members place on their school as a pillar of their community.”
A spokesman for the Department of Education said there was no “new catchment” for Coorabell, which has traditionally taken students from outside the zone, but because there were nine surplus classrooms in schools within a 15km radius, no new out-of-zone students could enrol, other than siblings.
Originally published as Delvene ready to ‘chain herself to desk’ to save her grandkids’ school
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