Electorate Office Address
1 Paradise Ave,
Miami QLD 4220
21 Jun 2012 12:00 AMMichael Hart
Mr HART (Burleigh—LNP) (12.46 am): I rise this evening to talk about one of my local schools, the Burleigh Heads State School. About three weeks ago I visited the school and acted as principal for the day. I spent the afternoon shadowing the principal, Peter Tong. I had a wonderful time at the school.
I spent a good half an hour out in the playground with the year 4 students. They were high-jumping. They were attempting to jump something that was about two foot high. They seemed to spend a lot of time actually picking up the bar up and putting it back in place. Hopefully their high-jump skills will kick in over the next few years.
We did a tour of the special education unit. I must say that the wonderful teachers there are an inspiration. The way they deal with the children in the special education unit is something to behold. I spent a good 10 minutes playing in the playground with a group of year 3 children. They attempted to teach me how to skip. Members can see by looking at me that I am not made for skipping.
Mr Ruthenberg: Skip the skipping!
Mr HART: I will skip the skipping. We then moved into one of the classrooms and I sat on the floor with some year 2 children and I read them a story. I think it had a tree, a giraffe and a farm in it. They seemed to be very enthusiastic about the story. That went for four or five minutes. I thoroughly enjoyed that.
Then I went back to the staffroom. I sat and talked to the teachers. We had a good natter about the issues that they have in their school. One theme is repeated at every school I go to, and I will talk more about that later.
I sat with the business services manager, Tracey Crawley, and an operator, Lisa, and we talked about the issues with OneSchool—seemingly another Labor failure as far as software goes. They seem to have a little trouble with that particular bit of software and it does not seem to be getting any better. The problem seems to revolve around their internet connection. So I took it upon myself to talk to Telstra later that week. Telstra sent out one of their service representatives. They dug up one of the local pits and figured out that they needed a new cable into the school. Having heard back from Tracey yesterday, I am pleased to report that Telstra has been in and replaced the cable and that their internet is now working 100 per cent of the time. Things seem to be very good. Burleigh Heads State School is a great school. I fully support all the teachers there.
