A concerned P&C president fears public schools across Port Stephens will be worse off under a needs-based Gonski agreement, not better.
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Renee Thompson said Anna Bay Public School would be nearly $300,000 worse off in years to come if the deal passes the senate in coming days.
“We really have to make sure that the original Gonski stays,” she said.
The government’s Gonski 2.0 announcement in May signaled the government’s plan to pump an extra $18.6 billion into the nation's schools over 10 years than it had promised in last year's budget.
The plan is however $22.3b shy of what the original Gonski might have been if it had been fully funded.
“This isn’t just a parent or carer issue, it’s a societal issue,” Ms Thompson said.
“We’re talking about the educational standards of our future workers.”
Ms Thompson met with Paterson MP Meryl Swanson on Friday.
“I spoke to Anna Bay P&C representatives who are understandably upset their school will lose nearly $300,000 under the government’s Gonski 2.0 plan,” Ms Swanson said.
“They, like a lot of parents and teachers who have contacted me, are worried about how their schools will cope; how they will continue to do the good work they started with the first four years of Gonski funding.”
Ms Swanson and the federal opposition have said the introduction of the needs-based version of Gonski will “strip $23 million from schools in the Paterson electorate”.
“The School Funding Estimator has been deliberately designed to disguise the cuts,” Paterson MP Meryl Swanson said.
“It only shows the funds the government will give to schools in the next two years, it does not show the funds it will take away by tearing up Gonski agreements already signed with schools.”
But the government has refuted this, having said the opposition’s funding commitment to Gonski “was based on fantasy dollars”.
“They did not even fund years five and six of what they claim to be Gonski funding, so hopeless and hapless were they,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told parliament in May.
“They were running around desperately signing cheques they could not honour — one bouncing cheque after another. That was the Labor Party's approach."
The Coalition would only honour the first four years Gonski when it was elected in 2013.
State governments including NSW still insist the federal govenment should honour the agreements in full.
But, as confirmed by Department of Education officials recently, the six-year deals are not legally binding and can be terminated at any time.
Ms Thompson has urged concerned parents to contact senators ahead of the vote through her Facebook page @fairnessinschools.
