Buses too small to pick
up all students
30 January 2006
A year is insufficient time
for the Education Department to adapt school buses and routes to pick up
all children on the route.
A Greenpatch family whose
third child started at Port Lincoln Junior Primary School this week was
informed by a letter dated 23rd January 2006 that there is no
room on the bus for the third child.
Member for Flinders Liz
Penfold said it is a ridiculous situation when two children can go on the
bus but the third will have to be driven to Port Lincoln.
“The Education Department
regularly surveys numbers for future student enrolments therefore bus
requirements would have been known early last year.
“My constituents are angry
that this issue has been left until now to be addressed when the Education
Department has known for more than 12 months the number of students that
will require bus transport into Port Lincoln from the Greenpatch area.
“It is also intolerable
that the issue has been handballed to school staff who then have to take
the flak for a situation not of their making and not their
responsibility,” she said.
Another parent who has
concerns about the Greenpatch school bus and routes conservatively
estimates that eight to 10 more children will be requiring transport in
the next three to five years
Mrs Penfold said Education
Department management was hardly up to the 21st Century when it
takes longer to arrange school bus pickups than to have a baby. |
