We are devastated that our beloved gardening and Sustainability educator cannot continue teaching at our school at Orange Grove Public School (OGPS) term 3 and cannot emphasise more her contribution to our school community and the value that she offers to our children in running the sustainability program at OGPS.

Scuba Stackpool has been a Gardening and Sustainability teacher at OGPS for the past 10 years. She is a very passionate educator who loves teaching kids and has a great passion for the environment. She is also appreciated by the Inner West community's merit of green space.

Kids at OGPS love being in her class, learning Gardening, Science, Biology, History and Sustainability. She also runs many gardening and cooking classes with children and sustainability programs at school and in the community. Her fantastic work in the garden and the sustainability program she runs in the school have been featured in many school newsletters and Department of Education programs for learning. Her classroom under the great fig tree is something extraordinary, and kids at school love this space, and the community loves and appreciates it even more on the weekends at the school market. 

The school has decided to let the Gardening and Sustainability teacher go. We want OGPS  to keep an embedded sustainability program within the school and not to opt for a sustainability provider who offers lessons on a term-by-term basis at an additional cost to families. The benefit of having someone who is embedded within the school is that the program can run throughout the year, maintain the school garden, improve the native habitat and biodiversity within the school grounds, and better work with teachers to embed sustainability into the school curriculum and across the school more broadly. This cannot be mirrored by a provider coming in and just providing half an hour of lessons on an irregular basis.

The children and the school community are devastated and do not want to lose this exceptional educator. Especially at a time when educators are in short supply and maintaining teaching staff levels in the profession is proving challenging, it's difficult to understand why all options available to retain such a loved staff member and program at an admittedly affordable cost haven't been entirely completely exhausted. We are asking the community to help us keep Scuba at our school and let her continue teaching our children at Orange Grove Public School.