Parents in Port Phillip to vote on educational opportunities as local schools continue to swell in numbers

PARENTS are warning Albert Park political candidates the local education crisis will be a vote decider at the State Election.

Build Our School campaign in the lead up to the state election. Leader is campaigning for a new school in South Melbourne. Enrolment numbers at schools including St Kilda Primary are rising too fast, because there aren't enough schools in Port Phillip to keep up with population growth. Jude Fraser Kolinac Grade 1 and Amber Bray grade 4 wait there turn at playtime. Picture: Tim Carrafa

PARENTS are warning Albert Park political candidates the local education crisis will be a vote decider at the State Election.

And parents have strong voting power in the marginal seat of Albert Park, where a handful of votes could decide the winner.

With less than six weeks until polling day, the community is still waiting for a funded, bipartisan commitment to a new public primary school in Port Phillip’s crowded north.

“I don’t really care who is in power — What I want is to make sure that, within a couple of years — not in 2018 or ’19 — we get a new school open” - Julie Brown, Port Melbourne parent.

Lobby group Two Schools Now says the crisis will be a deal-breaker in the marginal electorate, after hundreds of parents they surveyed overwhelmingly called for new schools to be built to ease overcrowding and provide certainty.

Spokesman Martin Lawrence said three-quarters of the 415 parents surveyed said increased public school capacity would be “very important” in deciding their votes on November 29.

And one-third of families said they were considering moving house to get their children into a state school.

The Port Phillip Leaderlaunched the Build Our School campaign in June, calling on both major parties to commit cash and give an opening date for the promised South Melbourne Primary School.

In a partial win, we secured an $11.5 million Labor commitment to build a primary school in a Parks Victoria building next to Albert Park lake.

But the Napthine Government has continued to drag its feet, refusing to firm up its 2012 promise to build Victoria’s first “vertical school” on Ferrars St.

DO YOU BACK THE BUILD OUR SCHOOL CAMPAIGN? HAVE YOUR SAY BELOW OR JOIN THE TWITTER CONVERSATION AT #buildourschool2017 OR POST ON THE PORT PHILLIP LEADER FACEBOOK PAGE.

WORRIED PARENTS WEIGH UP ELECTION OPTIONS

Richard and Julie Brown, with Madelyn, who is in Year 2 at the crowded Port Melbourne Primary School. Picture: DAVID SMITH

Port Melbourne’s Richard and Julie Brown are fed up after years of neglect of public education, and say their frustration will force them to vote with their feet next month.

They are putting the need for a new public primary school before candidates’ personal qualities or party politics. “I don’t really care who is in power,” Mrs Brown said.

“What I want is to make sure that, within a couple of years — not in 2018 or ’19 — we get a new school open.”

With eight-year-old Madelyn in Year 2 at overcrowded Port Melbourne Primary, Mrs Brown fears her daughter’s education will suffer if this does not happen.

“We are in a crisis,” she said. “By the time Madelyn gets to Year 6, the school will have 1000-plus students.”

Port Melbourne Primary School’s enrolments have grown from an initial 300 to 666 this year. Education Department projections say the school will have 936 children by 2017.

Mrs Brown said she didn’t care where the new school was located.

She called on the Government to hurry up and build it on either the Ferrars St site they have bought, or the Albert Park site Labor has earmarked.