College for Mooroopna Learning has advocated to Victorian Education Minister Natalie Hutchins in its continued push to reopen Mooroopna high school.
The group, known as COOL, was set to meet in-person with Ms Hutchins on Tuesday, November 15 but a last-minute change meant an online meeting was instead held with her chief-of-staff, Robert Larocca.
COOL spokesperson Lea Campbell said they were looking for a firm commitment from whoever formed government that they would not only reopen the school but fund a masterplan.
“Now the election is a closer race, it would be good to get a commitment from both parties,” she said.
Ms Campbell said they were concerned about the Coalition’s promise to hold community consultation into a new high school in Mooroopna.
“The issue for us is we’re competing with everyone in that community consultation process and we don’t think it should be a competition,” she said.
“We don’t think we ought to compete with the green site for a new school potentially to be built, or for the Coalition to find that in the consultation another town is more deserving than us.
“It’s a difficult scenario to know exactly what the Coalition is promising.”
The high school was just one of a range of issues raised with Mr Larocca, including the Victorian Government Schools Agreement struck this year between the union and government.
“The time-in-lieu arrangements are causing havoc around the state in terms of planning for next year and there’s a threat of activities in government schools may be cancelled,” Ms Campbell said.
“We were saying in the meeting, please look further into this because time-in-lieu provisions for teachers and education support staff needs to be a funded component, not an unfunded component.”
COOL staged a silent protest outside the election candidates’ forum in Shepparton on Tuesday night and a question was put to the candidates about Mooroopna high school during the event.
COOL also wrote to Ms Hutchins to ensure she was briefed on the issue.