High school site should be kept

Chris Cherry, acting president

Pottsville Community Association

The decision by councillors last week to place the proposed residential rezoning of the potential Seabreeze Pottsville high school site on exhibition was disappointing.

To go ahead with this process without providing the community with the current NSW Department of Education and Training’s final assessment of this site is asking the community to give feedback without providing them with all the information they need to make an informed decision.

At the end of the day, community consultation on this issue is irrelevant if the department equivocally states they will not use the site in the future.

Thank you to Crs Milne and Holdom for trying to back the community on this. You only have to look at the Tweed Shire map, with all 11 current high schools marked on it, to see the aggregation of high schools in the north and complete lack of them in the southern part of the shire.

The community deserves better than that. To make children travel up to an hour each way to go to school in an area as populated as this is not sustainable.

We are not asking for a high school overnight. We are asking for the potential to one day have a high school in our area not to be reduced.

For the NSW Education Department to rely on the proposed Dunloe Park residential development, which may never happen, or on the Employment Lands where students cannot safely ride or walk to school to provide this, is not in the community’s best interest.

We need our councillors to advocate on our behalf to the NSW Department of Education and get a better community outcome for our children’s future.