The Australian Education Union (AEU) says half a million dollars will not be enough to cover all necessary infrastructure upgrades at the new Alice Springs high school merger.
From the start of 2027, Centralian Middle School (CMS) and Centralian Senior College (CSC) will merge to become the Alice Springs College on the current CMS site in Gillen.
The school community has raised concerns that many classrooms, the hall and the library will be too small to fit extra students, while science and computer labs and the home economics kitchen need upgrading.
AEU NT branch president Brian Gray said the school needed repainting, had an ineffective air-conditioning system, broken or repeatedly breaking lifts meaning the school was inaccessible and more than the allocated $500,000 was needed for renovations.
"In a climate in which millions have been spent on truancy officers and hundreds of millions to upgrade prisons and build work camps, why has the same financial commitment not been given to invest in the young people of Alice Springs and build them the school they can be proud of and deserve?" Mr Gray said, quoting union members.
"We've had this fantastic announcement of $14 million to build these new sports facilities right next door to the CMS site.
He said the school community also wanted certainty around how exactly the $500,000 would be spent and when upgrades would be complete, information which had so far been unclear to staff and families.
'Significant need' for funding
CSC school council chair and a parent of children at both CMS and CSC Rachel Neary said $500,000 was "woefully inadequate", but schools in Palmerston had been provided more than $100 million to update science labs, tech areas and home economic rooms.
"We're not advocating for taking money off schools in Darwin, but actually what we're asking for … is needs-based funding and what we have at the new emerging Alice Springs College is significant need," she said.
"We sit in the lowest 3 per cent nationally in terms of our student outcomes and grades. So it's a school where there's a significant amount of need."
Mr Gray said there were 1,700 children in public primary schools in Alice Springs and only about 700 in public high schools, so the merger was an opportunity for the NT government to create a school that would keep children in public education.
"Alice Springs College needs to be a school that supports [students] to reach their fullest potential as the future leaders of this town," he said.
Ms Neary said the merger was a once-in-a lifetime opportunity.
Money amount uncertain
Department of Education acting deputy chief executive Miranda Watt said more funding would be provided to the Alice Springs College, which would likely be used for updating areas such as science labs and disability access, similar to what was delivered to Driver Secondary School and Rosebury Secondary School in Palmerston.
"[The amount of funding] is yet to be decided, but there's certainly a commitment that that will happen," she said.
Ms Watt defended the school's current infrastructure, saying CMS had in previous years had more than 1,000 students, with the only infrastructure changes since then being that some walls had been removed to open up spaces.
"So by putting those additional walls in and updating the spaces to be a little bit more contemporary, it means that many students could attend," she said.
She said while the school's hall may be inadequate for the influx of extra students, there were plenty of other large areas that could be used for assemblies.
