REDUCING COUNCILLOR NUMBERS A GOOD IDEA
Great idea was the suggestion from Bill Lancaster to reduce the number of councillors from 11 down to six. A great saving financially.
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We appreciate all the infrastructure having been done and still underway in Yambil Street.
However there are some very long awaited essential needs equally important.
1. For decades the request for a crematorium keeps being put on the backburner whereby locals who need this service are required (after death) to be trundled either to Wagga or Albury to be cremated.
2. A second cemetery (talked about) but as yet to be realised.
It is obvious to people that our present one is nigh on reaching its full capacity necessitating the need to get a second one up and running sooner rather than later as time waits for no one.
3. The new proposed Big School infrastructure with the need to either get it underway or halve the funding to each high school to do what they need to do.
When we realise all the huff and puff back and forth at the time another pipe dream that also hasn't got off the ground just faded into oblivion we can see the peoples frustration.
It does have a tendency to give them cause to feel out of sight out of mind.
Yvonne Rance, Griffith
DEMOUNTABLES FOR GRIFFITH’S NEW HIGH SCHOOL
The $25 million allocated to the farcical rebuild of the two public high schools in Griffith rolls on.
The community of Griffith may be interested in how efficiently those in charge are using the money.
Several weeks ago at the display in central, I asked one of the officers there, “where will the kids go while all the building works were being done over the coming years, knowing from experience that projects that they say will take a year actually end up taking three, four or five years?"
The answer? They’ll be in demountables (you know, those ugly, tinny boxes that take up playing areas and open space). Wade High and Griffith High will each get six demountables. So next year’s Year 7s will be in demountables for years to come.
Then I find out that the cost of these cheaply-built demountables will be $150,000 each.
And the $1.8 million for demountables will come out of the $25 million that was supposed to be used to improve student outcomes. It won’t be paid for by the NSW Government.
How does that work? So, assuming there will be cost blow-outs (there always are), contractor mistakes that have to be corrected at the schools’ costs, and other scams, the people of Griffith can be guaranteed that their public school kids will be given a pathetic deal, again.
The so-called merger was supposed to be about student outcomes. The two main factors in producing student outcomes are parental support of the children and teacher quality. Why is almost all the money being spent on buildings and cosmetic touchups?
I attend Griffith Teachers Federation meetings. The confusion, dysfunctionality, poor communications, lack of effective management of discipline issues and lack of direction reported by teachers at these is stunning.
People of Griffith, especially parents of public school kids, you need to be contacting the Minister for Education and letting the minister know you want your schools back and you want the promised funding to go to the schools to support increased quality teaching, the only real factor the school can control that will significantly improve student academic and social outcomes.
The Minister’s electorate phone number is 9999 3599 and his email is pittwater@parliament.nsw.gov.au. Demand answers to the big Griffith public high school issues.