Member for Roe Peter Rundle MLA has joined with Esperance community leaders to launch a new petition calling for an urgent upgrade of Esperance Senior High School (ESHS).
Mr Rundle said the ageing buildings are no longer fit-for-purpose and needed a significant rebuild.
“Esperance Senior High School staff and students continue to put up with the dilapidated, and in some parts, unsafe condition of school infrastructure which is undermining educational opportunities and outcomes for students,” Mr Rundle said.
“Minister for Education Tony Buti and his Labor colleagues are completely aware of the dire conditions plaguing Esperance Senior High School but have failed to make it a priority, despite the Cook Labor Government being flush with cash ahead of the State Budget.”
Mr Rundle said the ESHS board, P&C and the Shire of Esperance were all committed to securing an upgrade of the ageing high school, which was built in the 1960s with a capacity for around 400 students.
“ESHS now delivers an outstanding education for around 1,000 students, and consistently ranks among regional WA’s highest performing schools, yet staff, students and the wider community are left pleading for action from the State Government,” Mr Rundle said.
“Young people of Esperance deserve school facilities capable of delivering a twenty-first century learning environment comparable to their metropolitan counterparts.
“The investment in ESHS simply has not kept pace with the growth of the facility, which also provides the only public residential college in the entire Goldfields-Esperance region,
attracting students from hundreds of kilometres away.”
Mr Rundle said the petition called for the Legislative Assembly to “acknowledge the deplorable state of Esperance Senior High School” and called on the Cook Labor Government to urgently commit to an extensive upgrade of the facility.”
The petition can be signed online here: https://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/Parliament/LAePetitions.nsf/petitions/24-0005
