Healesville High passes test

By Kath Gannaway
HEALESVILLE High School is back on track in its fight for a new school.
The State MP for Seymour, Ben Hardman, visited the school last week to break the news it had been “invited” into the Building Futures process – the first step towards obtaining funding.
The school had been approved for a staged redevelopment – stage one of which has been built – but was forced to renew its bid when the Government put its new Building Futures strategy in place.
Lobbying has continued for the long-overdue redevelopment of the school, the main part of which was built in the 1960s as a temporary facility.
Healesville High School principal George Perini and school council president Jenny de Witte welcomed the news and said it was the go-ahead they had been waiting for.
It’s a process, they say, the entire school community is ready to work through to achieve a state-of-the-art high school for students, teachers and the community.
“The issue is, you have to be invited into the process first,” Mr Perini said.
“The school has been working hard for the last few years to be invited into that program. This is a very important step which Ben has advised us of and we can now start towards a new school.”
Mr Hardman said the school administration and school council had put in a phenomenal amount of work to arrive at this point.
“You don’t get invited into the process without displaying that your school understands what it has to do when they are ready to go into the cycle,” he said.
“In the past what would have happened is schools would have been placing like with like with no thought for flexibility or for the future education rationale,” he said.
“If you look at new schools around the State today they are classic buildings, which meet the needs of today’s students and which will still be serving the needs of those students and those communities in the future.”
Mr Perini said the process was about achieving the best outcomes for teaching and learning and that the aim in designing and building the new school would be to take the school in new directions to meet international best practice.
“We are very happy for the school and the school community because it gives us the opportunity to continue the outstanding teaching that happens at the school,” Mr Perini said.
“But it will also enable us to take that next step to put in facilities that are state of the art and that, by definition, will provide the opportunity to do ever-more-exciting things for students to ensure they get the best possible results and that we provide the maximum number of pathways.”
Mr Perini said the new design process would include the community of which the school was an integral part.
Ms de Witte said she was ready to do whatever it took to get the process moving.
“I have been on this fight since I’ve been president, lobbying and writing letters and pushing wherever I could,” she said.
“This is something we have wanted for a long time and what the school community needs and deserves.”
While Mr Hardman could offer no definite timeline for the process, he said a new school “was on the horizon”.