The countdown to closure is on, following news that the Anglican Schools Corporation will shut the doors of Milton's Gumnut Pre-Kinder on Friday, December 15, sale or no sale.
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Desperate parents, who have just over six weeks left to find alternative care arrangements for their children in 2018, have asked for a six month stay of execution.
Parent coordinator Calvin Rogers believes this would allow time for a successful DA process and sale. However, the Anglican Schools Corporation has refused.
It's understood that local parents and carers were told that the existing property “may not be up to today's building code and therefore the licence may not be able to be transferred until works are complete to bring it up to standard".
However, Mr Rogers believes that ownership could be transferred to the new operator under “existing use rights”.
The Anglican Schools Corporation agreed to lodge a development application with Shoalhaven City Council after the community lobbied to have the site on which the school sits subdivided from the parcel of land it shares with the former Shoalhaven Anglican School.
In doing this they hope to attract a buyer who would also continue to operate the preschool. This would potentially save the jobs of 15 soon-to-be redundant staff, and safeguard the early childhood education of 80 small children.
According to Mr Rogers the DA has been held-up by the Rural Fire Service, which is still completing a report that needs to be finalised before the application can be submitted.
A letter to parents in August outlined the corporation’s decision to sell the site on which the preschool sits. The speed of the DA approval and site sale could be the difference between the preschool opening its doors for the start of 2018 and not.
“What would be best is if the ASC would keep it open for a further three months to see the sale time to go through for June 30,” Mr Rogers said.
On Tuesday, August 15, parents and carers at the school received a letter from Anglican Schools Corporation CEO Ross Smith, which said the preschool would be shut down in December.
The letter outlines the corporation’s decision to “dispose of the site”, a decision made in 2017, shortly after the Shoalhaven Anglican School closed its doors, in 2016.
It was a bitter pill for close to 100 families directly affected. To date, the majority of those families are without alternative care arrangements for their children in 2018, and working parents face the very real prospect of quitting work as a direct result.
Mr Smith’s letter said: “In consideration of both the staff of Gumnut, and the parents currently using Gumnut’s services or thinking of enrolling their children for 2018, the Corporation has decided to provide staff and parents with notice, now, of the closure of Gumnut Pre-Kinder, which will occur following the normal December 2017 Christmas shut-down.”
The preschool and the former Anglican School share the same parcel of land, and both are owned by the Anglican Schools Corporation. The Anglican Schools Corporation also operates Gumnut Pre-Kinder.
“It is not possible for the Corporation to give any commitment as to whether a preschool might operate at the site beyond the time of (its) ownership of the site,” Mr Smith said, in his letter.
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