CRUSADING FOR SCHOOL
SHALOM students have vowed to keep making noise against the closure of their high school, staging a protest in front of the campus yesterday.
School captain Fred Asiba organised the protest with the help of other senior students. “Everyone’s out here fighting for our school, it’s something we really want to do and something we really love,” he said.
Shalom graduate Jay Marshall made an emotional pledge at the protest, which drew huge cheers and applause from students.
“We’re a family, when you come to school you’re safe, we’re brothers and sisters,” he said. “All that stuff that happened back in 2006, that’s 2006, they can’t shut the school down for that. I’ve graduated and I still love this school and came back for this rally.
“We’re going to stand up and fight this, they’re not shutting this school down because we love this school.”
Indigenous leader Gracelyn Smallwood said the Uniting Church was not telling the whole truth behind the closure.
“I do not believe that the review has said to close the place down,” Prof Smallwood said.
“They didn’t put a lifeline in place. If there were problems, there should have been infrastructure put in place.
“Any reviewer that said to close the school down without putting infrastructure in place shouldn’t be reviewing ever again.”
The Queensland and Northern Territory Independent Education Union announced it would lodge a formal dispute with the Fair Work Commission challenging the school’s handling of the closure.
Assistant branch secretary Brad Hayes said the closure of a school in the absence of any staff or union consultation was unprecedented.
“The employer has handled this process terribly so far,” he said. “While the pain of recent days cannot be undone, the employer must now do all that it can to minimise any further distress and uncertainty for staff.”
Mr Hayes said a meeting of IEU members on Tuesday had unanimously endorsed a set of arrangements to apply in the case of any redundancies at the college.