ABOUT six years after a community campaign to bring more families to Cumnock almost doubled enrolments at the school, student numbers are declining once again.
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With student numbers falling below 52, three Cumnock Public School staff, teacher Rebecca Thorne as well as an admin worker and a casual teacher have been given notice.
Cumnock Public School P and C member and parent Christine Weston was behind the successful rent a farm house initiative in 2009 and was disappointed to see the school decline again and was concerned it would affect the school bus service.
“We had three different composite classes now they will merge and there will be two classes, which the parents are not happy about, you will have years 3, 4, 5, 6, four years in one class,” Mrs Weston said.
“At the moment we have 50 [students] and we need 52 to maintain our third teacher and administration support, three jobs are affected by this.
“If we can get a couple more kids we can get our third teacher back before she’s transferred to another school to the western region.”
Mrs Weston said the numbers were known at the start of the year and could be partly due to students going to high school and more younger children not coming in to replace them.
“It would be a perfect solution for people to move out here even if they work in Orange,” she said.
She said 40 years ago there were 130 children at the school but with increased mechanisation and farms growing larger with fewer workers, the community shrunk.
However, in 2009 student enrolments increased from 34 to 60 students with some of the 20 new families coming from the Gold Coast, Brisbane and Perth.
“There’s about four families living in a $1 house at the moment,” she said.
“We are going to have to redo it every five or six years, it was a great success we started and we are hoping to do it again,” she said.
She said there are several houses currently available with one priced at $1 a week that needs some work, two at $50 a week that need a bit of attention after being vacant for six weeks, one at $150 a week that doesn’t need work as well as a newer house in town priced at $260 a week.
For more information or to sign up visit www.rentafarmhouse.com.au.
tanya.marschke@
fairfaxmedia.com.au