Issue 

The Department of Lands and Housing is planning to imminently sell 61 Arundel St in Glebe. 

This site currently operates as KU Laurel Tree House Children's Centre. The service began in 1983 and has educated over 1500 local children. 

The current forecast is that our KU centre will be forced to close at the end of 2021. 

Why should you care?

Selling off assets that support our children is wrong. Doing so without community consultation is abhorrent. It does not support a fair go for children and their families. 

The City of Sydney's own Child Care Needs Analysis paper of 2019 recognises that the City’s population is expected to grow exponentially in the next 20 years. This demonstrates that the availability of sufficient high quality child care options will become more important than ever. For a growing population we need more high quality affordable childcare and education centres, not less.

KU Laurel Tree provides exceptional care, having achieved the highest National Quality Standards ratings possible. It is also one of the few not-for-profit services with lots of outdoor space for children. The Director and staff of the Service are an integral part of our community and they deserve to be appropriately valued and recognised! 

In other words, the Service is a 'rare as hens teeth' place for the children of Forest Lodge and Glebe to receive very high quality early childhood education and to experience a 'backyard'. It also provides this care at an affordable price point. It may not be the newest Centre, but it is the most loved! 

What do we want? 

We want our elected representatives, KU Children's Services, the City of Sydney and the Department to take immediate steps to halt the sale of the KU site and to save that site and the KU service (or at the very least, a comparative service), in perpetuity, for the benefit of our children and families.

In other words, to live out their mandate and respective responsibilities to ensure that there is adequate high quality and reasonable cost education for our young children and services and infrastructure for our families. Now and into the future!

Impact 

YOU can make a positive difference. Sign this petition to: 

• save KU Laurel Tree House as a site for early childhood education 
• tell the Department and Government that such assets cannot be sold to the detriment of our children and their families 
• ask KU's CEO, Christine Legg, to continue to take actions that support KU Laurel Tree House and which accord with KU's vision and values
• show the next generation of children and parents that they matter, and 
• avoid a precedent that this type of sale (and process) is ok! 

What now?

SIGN and SHARE this petition.

Ask everyone you know to sign it! 

Email Jamie Parker and let him know you want his support to save KU Laurel Tree!

Even if you don't live locally or know the Service personally, signing this petition shows our Government that we will not agree to, or in any way support, the sale of assets which are crucial to the education of our children. Also, that we believe that the next generations of parents and children deserve equal, not lower quality or less child education related infrastructure! 

 THANK YOU!!!!!!!!