Walgett Community School has made national headlines this year, following reports of violent and threatening behaviour between students and claims the local police were being called to the school almost daily.
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But Mr Ramsland said the plan for the Police Citizens Youth Club to share facilities with the school was the solution to a completely separate problem.
“The Castlereagh LAC [Local Area Command] is one of the only commands in NSW that doesn’t have a PCYC facility located somewhere in its perimeter,” Mr Ramsland said.
“It was arranged probably two years ago when we were unsuccessful in getting the major grant [to build a PCYC facility]. I guess [putting it in the school] is the way the state government responded to what was a perceived need in Walgett.”
Four PCYC staff, including two sworn police officers have been working within the school grounds for about one month already, Mr Ramsland said.
“The police have got a caseload of some of the troublesome local teenagers and will be working one -n-one with them. I think that will only extend right across the community.”
The NSW Department of Education has welcomed the arrangement.
“A memorandum of understanding was signed some time ago with a licence agreement finalising arrangements for the use of school facilities for activities principally before and after school and over weekends and school holidays was signed in April this year,” a department spokesperson said.
“The school saw a benefit of assisting the PCYC to establish in Walgett because it was an established youth network that would offer local young people and the wider community greater recreational options particularly choices that emphasised exercise, sport, health and wellbeing.”
But Mr Ramsland admitted a solution to some of the school’s more serious problems were still a while off.
“Things like the variety of the curriculum, the behaviour of the students, the run-down condition of the buildings, the fact that it’s been declared a bypass school so people don’t have to send their kids there.
“A great number of students are attending boarding school or who live out of town during the week to go to school in places like Dubbo. You need a broader cross section of the community attending that school. I think you’ve got to provide the right facilities and the right teachers to encourage the critical mass at the school.”
“It has taken 25 years to reach this stage and you’re not going to fix it in 25 minutes.”
