‘’Please keep your promises. Our children really need you.’’
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That’s the impassioned plea mother of four Rosemarie Roach made to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull when the Gonski billboard campaign rolled into Barrack Heights Public School on Tuesday.
Ms Roach joined teachers, other parents and NSW Teachers Federation representatives in calling on Mr Turnbull to honour the original six-year Gonski agreement signed between the Commonwealth and NSW governments in 2013.
NSWTF figures show Barrack Heights PS will be $550,000 worse off under the proposed new school funding plan labelled Gonski 2.0 by Mr Turnbull.
This ‘’flabbergasted’’ Ms Roach, who has two sons at the school, one of whom is in the autism support class.
‘’We really need that money for all our kids, whether they have additional needs or not,’’ she said.
‘’I’m really horrified. It just feels like the government is relying on us to remain ignorant and passive and to just say ‘ah well that’s the best you guys can do’.
‘’Our families are up to their eyeballs trying to cope with life and we really rely on our school to meet our kids education needs because we just can’t afford private extra services like speech and OT [occupational therapists] and extra support for reading.’’
Barrack Heights PS principal Sarah Rudling said 81 per cent of the 251 students at the school had a ‘known or unknown disability’.
‘’The fifth and sixth year of Gonski funding is primarily around disability. Currently we only get $30,000 in cash to meet the needs of those kids,’’ Ms Rudling said.
‘’But it is my mainstream kids, the kids that might not meet what the Department of Education says is disability and they are the kids that we are fighting for.
‘’There is so many things I can spend $550,000 for these extraordinary kids who should be getting what they deserve.’’
NSWTF deputy president Gary Zadkovich said it was true the Turnbull Government plan would spend more on schools funding over the next 10 years.
‘’But his plan on school funding is a deceit,’’ Mr Zadkovich said.
‘’By abandoning the last two years of the NSW agreement on schools funding they will be abandoning a commitment to spend $846 million on over 2200 public schools across the state.’’