Apparently Cate (the woman G and I have always said will be responsible for getting us a high school) received a call from The Age asking if we were celebrating yet? The journalist revealed the exciting news that the Minister for Education, Martin Dixon was about to announce the decision to expand Coburg Senior High School to include years 7 -12 in 2015. An hour so later she got another call from the DEECD who confirmed this great news including a process of community consultation. So on Wednesday morning I got up early to read this article in The Age, Campaigners win fight: Coburg will have a high school. Tears streamed down my face. Grace came in and gave me a cuddle and told me how great she thought it was that she'd be able to go to high school with her friends from primary school. I posted a link to the article and was surprised at how many people are online at 6.30am.
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Mosaic showing some of the HSC working party and some of our protest actions |
I've also been reflecting on my part in all this. Coming on the back of the pool campaign, I initially resisted becoming involved with HSC. In the end though, I really thought they needed a more easy to update website and I liked hanging out with Cate and I wanted a high school, so I put my hand up. Over the last few years, I've tended not to be one for meetings and as I have discovered, I actually don't much like meetings. But I do like taking photos and messing about with blogger, scribd, flickr, Facebook and Mailchimp. The good thing about having a website is that it gives you a way to collect your history as a group, to positively express what the group is about and to tell your story. Using Mailchimp enabled us to get more of that story out to more people but I think it was Facebook where our supporters really engaged. I didn't know that much about Facebook pages in the beginning and neither did Cate but she took to it like a natural. I guess the website was like the library and Facebook was like the common room. You need both. I've learnt heaps and I'm thinking that by doing those things I like, I've made a contribution. And I'm going to stick my head out here and say that I'm proud of that. However, I do recognise that we absolutely need the people who tirelessly go to meetings and talk with politicians and bureaucrats. People who don't give up when the meetings are difficult or unpleasant. Without those people and their efforts, nothing changes. Cate and the others in the working party have done that brilliantly and I'm tremendously grateful to them. But I'm quite pleased to have been in the background doing my thing too.
Yeehah! High School for Coburg in 2015!