Fuss for a bus

By Lachlan Ellis

Frustrated Moorabool parents have met at the Ballan Community House, calling on the state government to fund another bus for high school students in the area.

Daylesford Secondary College parents met on Friday 2 September, brainstorming how to spark some action on an issue that has troubled families in the area for years.

Principal of the College Stephen Macphail, also attended the meeting, sharing the hopes that a community effort may help fix the problem.

The school has requested another bus on multiple occasions to the Education Department’s Student Transport Unit, with no success.

Currently there is a large government funded bus provided however, to meet the excess amount of students needing to commute, the Daylesford College provides, at their cost, a minibus driven by a volunteer teacher twice a day to Ballan.

Ally Munari, who is both a Daylesford Secondary College parent and the Councillor for the Woodlands Ward, organised the meeting.

She said that the government needed to support regional children, and given there’s no high school in Ballan, another bus “isn’t asking for a lot”.

“We need another bus to go to Daylesford. Daylesford Secondary College is saying ‘we can take you’, but parents have this stress of not being able to get on a seat. On the bus. Our argument is, the government funds children to go to Ballarat schools out of the zone – for example, Ballan isn’t zoned to Mount Clear, but kids get a bus seat to go there – so why aren’t they funding another bus to go to a school that has capacity to take them?” Cr Munari told the Moorabool News.

“If they’re not going to give us a school in Ballan, which I don’t see happening, and they already have room at Daylesford, which is the exact same distance to Ballarat, why aren’t they utilising that? We should have more choice as parents, it’s a hard decision to make.”

Cr Munari said parents in the Ballan area were having to “reluctantly choose” other schools, despite believing Daylesford would be a better fit for their children, simply because of the lack of bus seats.

“Not everyone has the option of sending their child to a private school. The government blames the bus issue on zoning, but at the end of the day, why are regional children being so heavily zoned when there’s capacity at schools?” she said.

“Parents have asked why aren’t we zoned to all three schools that include Mt Clear, Woodmans Hill and Daylesford?”

The group of parents are creating personal letters from every family, to go to the Student Transport Unit and local MPs.

The letters are planned to be sent out at the end of this week.

If you’d like to submit letters, address one letter to Peter Nelson – Director of Student Transport Unit and Chris Thompson – SWVR Region Director, and a second letter to Mary-Anne Thomas MP and Michaela Settle MP, and email both to [email protected] by Friday 16 September.