06 Jun 2018 Euroa Gazette, Euroa VIC (General News) by Will MurrayBy WILL MURRAY EUROA Secondary College received $950,000 from the State Government last month, and Jaclyn Symes (MLC, Northern Victoria) was in Euroa last week to meet with school representatives to discuss where the money might be spent. Ms Symes said it was imperative that the improvements done by the school using the recently allocated funding was done so with reference to a larger master plan for the school. Im here today not just to look at where the school might look to spend the $950,000 that Labor have contributed, but also to ensure that the school has a long-term plan for how teachers, staff, students and parents would like to look in the future, she said. Theres no point in using this money to upgrade and modernise areas of the school that might be removed or completely re-done in the future. Without a master plan for the school, it was difficult to say where that funding could be spent on the school, which hasnt seen a major investment in new facilities for nearly a decade. Euroa Secondary College principal Harold Cheung said that plans to spend the nearly $1 million were still beery much in the planning phase, and no decisions would be made without further consultation and planning. This money is very much welcome, but we realise weve got some work to do before we will see it spent, Mr Cheung said. We will conduct some consultation prior to submitting our ideas to the Schools Building Authority, who will ultimately decide where our funding can be allocated. Before we were given this funding we were reliant on doing what upgrades and retrofitting we can with limited internal funds, so were very grateful and excited to see some funding come our way. We are still predominantly working out of those outdated spaces, and so we are in real need of serious investment. Ms Symes was keen to reassure the school and the community that the $950,000 was just the beginning of a push to ensure that ESC received the serious investmentthat was required to bring the school up to a high standard. This funding needs to be the start of something bigger for the Euroa Secondary College, she said. I want to assure the people of Euroa that this is not just a matter of throwing some money at the school so that people will stop telling us that the school needs upgrading. This is the beginning of what we hope will be a targeted, multimillion dollar investment to support this communitys students. We need to therefore first need to understand where that future investment might be made to make a real and long-term impact.