Aging assets are struggling to cope with the exploding student population at Gillieston Public School, according to the school’s parents and citizens president Stan Mikolajski.
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The school’s toilets are posing the biggest problem and it will only get worse if they are not connected to the sewerage system, Mr Mikolajski said.
In the past three years enrolments at the tiny rural school have risen from 87 to the current level of 143 on the back of a property development boom that has been transforming the wider Gillieston Heights area.
And with predictions the student population could hit more than 170 in 2014, Mr Mikolajski is calling for measures to be put in place now to ensure the school can adequately cater for the growth.
He said the school’s toilet facilities and associated infrastructure were in a “pretty abysmal shape”.
The school is not connected to the sewerage system, with waste from the toilets drained into a holding tank.
Mr Mikolajski said while this was pumped out fortnightly, an apparent leak in the tank is allowing seepage into the surrounding soil.
“Through summer the smell quite often becomes unbearable,” he said. “Surely there must be a contingency [fund] somewhere that can replace assets that are grossly out of date and inadequate.”
Mains sewerage has been installed along Northview Street, a new road built on the school’s back boundary as part of the neighbouring Hunter Rise development.
But because this is uphill from the school, Mr Mikolajski believes it would take 800m of pipe, travelling a fairly circuitous route, to connect to it – costing anywhere up to $200,000.
Mr Mikolajski raised the issue of the toilet, as well as some fencing concerns, with Maitland MP Robyn Parker during a visit to the school on Friday.
He said he was pleased with her response and hoped discussions between Ms Parker, school principal Karen Johanson and representatives from the Department of Education would identify a solution quickly.
Ms Parker said she was aware of a “range of issues” that had been raised.
In terms of the toilet facilities, she said they would explore both a “quick fix” to repair the existing system, as well as another “interim solution” involving Hunter Water.
“We need to work out what’s more efficient and cost effective,” she said. “But ultimately we’ll get it fixed currently and then look at what we do next.”
