The popular French-Australian Preschool will look to renovate, build and potentially expand after raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past year for much-needed upgrades to its Red Hill site.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The bilingual not-for-profit child care centre last year appealed to the community for help in raising $1 million to bring its facilities up to standard by the federal government's 2020 deadline.
Although falling short of the fundraising target, the 128-child centre raised about $500,000 through events, an ongoing donate-a-brick scheme and donations from French companies. It also received a bank loan of $2 million.
The preschool now has enough money in the kitty to begin building new classrooms by the end of the year.
Once the new building is complete, the existing preschool building will be renovated so each classroom has a toilet and outdoor access.
The renovations will give teachers a staffroom and students a multi-purpose room.
French-Australian Preschool director Veronique Danjou said: "The possibilities with this sort of plan are flexible.
"We can decide to increase our numbers, we can decide to remain the same numbers.
"We don't want to be a 200-or so children's centre, but the flexibility of the renovations and extension will allow us, and the board in a few years will make this decision to be able to respond to the demand a little better."
The project will cost more than $3 million with the first stage - the building of new classrooms - to take about six months.
The existing learning space has not been substantially updated in several decades. The preschool has been at the former Red Hill Primary site since 1977.
Ms Danjou also said the privately-operated French-Australian Preschool had approached the Education Directorate with two proposals: that Telopea Park School's kindergarten could be taught at the early childhood centre, and that it could become a feeder preschool for the popular bilingual public school.
"We've sent proposals and we're waiting for the government to engage with us," Ms Danjou said.
As well, Ms Danjou joined the Telopea Park School Parents and Citizens Association in speaking against a reduction in the number of kindergarten classes at the Barton school. The directorate said this week no decision had been made on stream reductions.
"We are truly hoping that it will not happen because it is detrimental to all the families who have already invested a lot of time and effort in French education for their children and we want to continue this," Ms Danjou said.
