An Open Letter to Mike Baird and Adrian Piccoli Make Mike & Adrian aware of your support, sign the petition and email them using the links below. manly@parliament.nsw.gov.auoffice@piccoli.minister.nsw.gov.au As a local community, we have been patiently campaigning since 2008 to get desperately needed new facilities for our ageing & over crowded school.  Not so long ago the school nearly closed. From 190 pupils in 2008, and despite stopping enrolments from outside catchment, we reached 451 students in 2016 and are forecasted to be at 540 in 2017 and over 600 by 2018. The number of students at Manly Vale Public School will have tripled in 10 years (2008-2017) with the only change to facilities being the addition of demountable temporary classrooms. Over the past 6 intakes we have added one or two demountable classrooms over our open space each year, so we have 7 permanent classrooms and 12 temporary demountable classrooms meaning over 65% of our students are taught in ‘temporary’ classrooms and every other facility such as library, toilets, hall and canteen are under scale and not fit for purpose. A growth of families within our catchment and the wider catchments of Manly and Balgowlah, new housing developments and  stellar NAPLAN results in addition to the school's excellent reputation has led to Manly Vale being one of the most over subscribed primaries in the state.  The pressing need for new schools on the Northern Beaches is clearly outlined in this recent article from the SMH. With over 17% growth in students from since 2012 in Manly, and 47% growth at Manly Vale Public School over the same period, it’s simple to see where the flow of students is going. Local boundary changes in other schools (e.g. Manly Village) has a knock on effect to other local schools - particularly Manly Vale Public School. This is now critical, the time to act is well and truly upon us. Since the funding to redevelop the school was approved as part of the the NSW State budget in 2014, the school community has been very involved with the design process and one thing universally expressed by the school community to the Department of Education is we want to maintain it’s most loved character trait - that its site location makes it feel like a bush school in the city. However the realities of Sydney’s urban growth have to be addressed and the school must grow to accommodate surging enrolments. We all love the current Manly Vale Public School and have the genuine goal of building on its amazing sense of community and bush land character, whilst upgrading the facilities to be the best primary school in NSW if not Australia.  At present we are a school next to the bush (there’s a locked chain fence between the yard and the nature area), but the new design purposely will have the classrooms within the bush and create much more of a connection between the pupils and the wildlife. The notion of building on the existing footprint is not something wanted by the majority of the local community as it will require a 3-4 multi-story school, break with our bushland school character and not offer enough open space for the children. Again, triple the number of students in the same space is not solving the problem. The proposed design is a wonderful $23 million community asset and a plan drawn up over a exhaustive two year design process than explored numerous locations and designs, but settled on the current plans as to what would deliver the best educational outcomes for our students. It’s time to back the fully funded, fully designed solution being proposed, rather than more years waiting whilst endless thought bubbles are explored.   In amongst the political jockeying, the only clear fact is that despite the funding being in place local children continue to be taught in demountable classrooms, every year have less oval to play on, less library time and a longer queue for ancient toilets. All NSW parents welcome the additional public school funding outlined in the recent NSW state budget, but it will amount to nothing if you can’t get them built.  It appears to be a bizarre situation when it seems easier to build a billion dollar casino on public land in NSW than a local primary school, so please don’t be swayed by a vocal minority of non locals who don't have kids educated in the area and don’t understand our chronic over crowding problem at Manly Vale Public School.  On behalf of the students, parents, teachers and school community can you please support the wonderful plans for the redevelopment of Manly Vale Public School and ensure this essential project gets built in the very near future.