Debbie Pike’s talk…

Once upon a time, a long long time ago… Well, actually, it was in late 2000, the Lynbrook Residents’ Association saw that Lynbrook was expanding rapidly, and would need a new school. We knew that this area was rich in families with young children, and we decided to get moving straight away.

So, the Lynbrook Schools Action Group was formed. Firstly we conducted a door to door survey, in March 2001, asking all sorts of personal questions, which were patiently answered. My favourite was “Is there a possibility of more children in the next 5 years?”, followed immediately by the comment that we wouldn’t be enforcing that one!

After lots of footslogging, we collated the results and sent them off to everyone we could think of, to try and get some notice taken of us. We met with Neville Rohan from the Department of Education, who very patiently answered all our questions, and advised us to keep pushing. Neville told us we would be looking at around 2006/2007 for the new school!

A year went by, and we conducted another survey in the new areas that had sprung up in the meantime. All the children from the first survey were aged by a year, and the new results were sent off…

A lot of people started to take notice of Lynbrook, including Timothy Holding, who took us under his wing. Our need for a school was mentioned in Parliament, but there was a lot going on that we were unaware of behind the scenes too.

Then the magic day early last year, when Otto contacted me to tell me that funding for the new school had been approved, and could I organise some parents to be on a planning committee?

When I picked myself up from the floor, there began a whirlwind of a year for the 6 of us on the committee. There was such a tight time-line that we were meeting once a week for quite a while. We went through the lot: choosing the wonderful architects from Y2, who listened to all our hopes and dreams and managed to include quite a few in the end! We were a great team: department of Education people, architects, principals, teachers and parents. We argued, nodded, approved and disapproved until we were happy, and we hope all of you will be too.

Speaking for myself, I have thoroughly enjoyed the whole process: we have come from the first stages of trying to get ourselves noticed, to a brand new school in 4 short years, and I am very impressed with the power of the community spirit. I think we can be extremely proud of Lynbrook. Just a short sidenote here: isn’t it ironic that it took us 4 years to get a school, and about 8 years to get a Postbox???

What first attracted me to the Lynbrook estate were the magnificent red-gums that abound there. We chose one to live next door to, and everyone comments on its beauty. Lynbrook, thanks to Vic-Urban, is famous for its environmentally friendly policy: keeping the red-gum trees, lots of parkland, the award-winning water sensitive urban design, no overhead power lines. My personal vision for the new school is that it could be really innovative in the area of conservation, which is so important for our children’s future. We already have the library windows overlooking one of the wetland areas, and the toilets will be flushed using water collected from the gymnasium roof. Two magnificent trees will help screen the gymnasium, and there is a cluster of smaller trees near the children’s playground. We already have a big advantage over other new schools which were razed to the ground before starting!

In closing, there are a number of people I would like to thank - none of this would have been possible without you:

The original foot-soldiers: Sue Smith, Linda Pilton, Miles Weidemann, Karen Grainger, Anne Lovatt, Deborah Duane and Fiona Mison.

Planning Committee parents: Miles Weidemann, Sue Smith, Fiona Mison, Llyly Valdes and Anne Lovatt.

The rest of the planning committee, especially Christine Wakeling, who hosted us every week at Hampton Park Primary school, and always had yummy things for us to eat.

I’d like to thank Vic-Urban, who supported us one hundred percent, and let us use their photocopier!

Thank you to all the people in positions of authority who listened.

And also, nearly done, honest, thank you to Lynbrook Residents’ Association, under the leadership of Mike Parry 4 years ago, who started the ball rolling.

And, finally, of course, a big thank you to the parents of the new customers at the school next year – without you, there would be no kids and no school…