By Jolene Ogle
Families appeal after being forced to pay up to $800 to get students to school…
A “ridiculous bureaucratic bungle” has left Noosa families paying up to $800 for school bus transport and Noosa MP Glen Elmes says he’s had enough.
Currently, the department of education catchment boundaries don’t seem to align with the Department of Transport school bus boundaries, meaning many families living within a school’s catchment zone aren’t eligible for the free school bus.
Instead, parents have to send their students to school on the bus that takes them to the correct school but at a cost of up to $800.
One student living in Tandur near the Gympie border lives within the Noosa District State High School (NDSHS) Cooroy campus catchment zone but the bus that travels past their house only goes to Gympie State High School.
The mother said she tried many times to enrol her year 9 daughter into Gympie High School because it was much closer to their home and they would have been eligible for free bus transport.
However she was told that wasn’t possible and she would have to send her daughter to the NDSHS Cooroy campus.
But the NDSHS school bus doesn’t travel past their home so she has to drive her daughter 10 minutes to Cooran to catch the school bus and pay $800 per year, on top of existing school costs.
“What’s really laughable is that after we had enrolled our daughter in Noosa District State High School and paid for all of her books, uniforms and the bus, we received a call to tell us our daughter could start at Gympie State High School,” the mother said.
“How does that work? Why do they say over and over we can’t enrol at Gympie and then with a phone call we can?”
Mr Elmes said his office had been told that most families were paying $400 and that the system has failed these families.
He said he was frustrated after exhausting all means of contacting the Minister for Transport prior to his recent resignation.
“I wrote to the previous Minister for Transport six times and spoke with him personally in the Parliament about this issue.
“I even reached out to his electorate office staff in writing and by phone, pleading that this bureaucratic nonsense be rectified,” he said.
“Despite Minister Hinchliffe’s verbal acknowledgement that the plight for these families forced to travel to the Pomona campus was real, and his verbal assurance that a remedy was possible, Noosa families have been left out in the cold in a costly and unaffordable void.”
Mr Elmes said the problem is that two Labor Ministers and their departments were unable to co-ordinate and communicate with each other.
“It is not the students’ and their families’ fault that one bureaucrat has drawn a line on a map and another can’t see fit to grant deserving families transport assistance, yet it is the families paying the price for incompetence,” he said.
“If, and it is a big if, Sunshine Beach High, which I understand is at capacity anyway, were forced by the Education Department to accept these displaced students, the families would just have to fork out for new uniforms and relocate their children in two years’ time back to Noosa District State High at Cooroy to commence Grade 9.
“These mega portfolios in the current Government are simply not working and, politics aside, local families are suffering.”
Now that the Deputy Premier Jackie Trad has been announced as the new Minister for Transport, Mr Elmes said he will speak with her about the issue as soon as possible.
“I will be calling upon her as a matter of urgency to clean up this mess once and for all.
“In additional, I will be asking that the decision be backdated and the families be reimbursed,” he said.
Have you experienced a similar issue? We would love to hear your story. Email newsdesk@noosatoday.com.au.
