PARENTS are starting to withdraw their children from the doomed Acacia College and switch to new schools before the Mernda facility closes in December.
The school’s owner, the Uniting Church, put the school on the market last week through a commercial agent. Some parents of the 513 students began pulling them out of the college to settle their children into new schools before the 2014 school year, Acacia principal Andrew Houghton said.
The community is still reeling from the college’s shock closure because of massive debt.
Some parents vented their anger on the website of the Uniting Church, which has revealed it needed $30 million to finish building the school and $10 million for infrastructure.
One parent said that as he was writing his complaint he had received a text message demanding school fees.
Mr Houghton, a father of three students at Acacia, said the college had written to families asking if they had found an alternative school and were “transitioning out of Acacia and relocating” to new schools before the end of the year.
For those remaining, Mr Houghton said staff were committed to finish the year with “pride, dignity and respect”.
Church spokesman Michael Docherty said the church had appointed Fitzroys, a leading commercial real estate agency, in conjunction with the church’s advisors PPB, to sell the property through an expressions of interest campaign.
“The Uniting Church has received a number of inquiries from a diverse range of education providers interested to acquire the Acacia College.”
