Next month, hundreds of families in Port Stephens will celebrate the opening of the new Catherine McAuley Catholic high school in Medowie. Nearly three hundred students are enrolled in the school's inaugural cohort of year seven and year eight classes, with even more local students sitting on the waiting list for both year levels.
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Catherine McAuley Catholic College represents an exciting, welcome, and long-overdue offering for our community. But it is also represents a clear and undeniable repudiation of the NSW Liberal Government's senseless claim that Medowie does not need a public high school.
As of February, Medowie will have an independent Christian high school and a Catholic high school, but no public high school for local families. The frustrating absurdity of this situation is only made worse by the fact the Department of Education has owned land in Medowie specifically for a public high school since 1984.
The NSW government, under Premier Barry O'Farrell, Mike Baird and now Gladys Berejiklian, has failed to accept that Medowie's growing population needs and deserves a public high school. If one were to be built, it would cater to the thousands of families who already live in Medowie. It also would cater to the thousands of families on the Tilligerry Peninsula, Salt Ash and along the north-western shores of the Port.
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Instead, when school returns, a thousand public high school students will cram onto buses without seatbelts and travel to Raymond Terrace, Nelson Bay, Maitland or Newcastle because there is no local option. This situation has been untenable for years. Frustratingly, 2021 won't be any different.
The government's go-to excuse is to spitefully threaten the closure of one of the Raymond Terrace's high schools if Medowie had one. But their fear campaign ignores their own population projections in both areas. It denies our community's desperate need for high-quality, local public education options. And it cruelly undermines the effort invested by our local teachers and principals that has reaped many positive results in Raymond Terrace's schools. A public high school in Medowie was needed years ago. More than ever before, it's needed now. With Medowie's ongoing growth, it will be desperately needed in the future.
As many families celebrate the opening of another independent high school in Medowie, others will have their fingers crossed that their kids will return home safely on the school bus. But we should all be asking the question of the Berejiklian government - "what about public education?"
- Kate Washington is Port Stephens MP
