Harkaway Hills College hopes to build Lysterfield Lake College in Narre Warren North
A conservative Catholic school is fighting to build a new 239-student school campus in a picturesque green wedge zone in Narre Warren North.
Education
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A conservative Catholic school is fighting to build a $15 million campus in a picturesque green wedge zone in Narre Warren North.
Pared Victoria wants to build a new 239-student school on an eight-hectare site next to the popular Lysterfield Lake.
It’s one of six recent religious and educational developments in the area, sparking concern among residents.
The application for Lysterfield Lake College has been opposed by the City of Casey, sparking a three-day hearing in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal this week.
Schools are allowed in green wedge areas even though they are zones designed to protect agriculture, biodiversity and scenic landscapes.
The site at 19-23 Horswood Rd also has a significant landscape overlay and is in a bushfire management area.
Harkaway Hills College, a nearby girls’ school which started in 2016 with just 13 enrolments, now has 149 students.
If permitted, its new brother school will house 239 male students from grade three to 12 and 22 staff.
The completed school is expected to attract more than 300 car trips teach morning and afternoon from parents and staff.
The planning application for the school notes that the development will involve “a series of low-density educational buildings and facilities that are seamlessly integrated within the natural land contours of the site”.
It notes that land within the urban growth boundary is “financially prohibitive” for non-government schools that do not get government funding.
Harkaway Hills College charges just $5000 a year in fees but gets $13,000 per student from taxpayers and in 2020 received around $1.7 million in government capital funds.
The application argues the school is a suitable use of the land within proximity of the urban growth boundary.
City of Casey manager of planning and building Duncan Turner said the council refused the application in January “based on a number of planning considerations including the appropriateness of the proposed development in a Green Wedge Zone”.
A Narre Warren East Residents Group told a State Government committee they are “very concerned about protecting agricultural land in the Southern Ranges of the Dandenongs” and want schools prohibited in green wedge zones.
Lysterfield Lake College principal Trent Thomas said the school “is in VCAT proceedings about its ability to establish permanent buildings at a site that it has purchased.
“We are hopeful for a positive result soon,” he said.
The school is operated by PARED which stands for Parents for Education, an independent parents’ foundation.
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