Yass High School P&C met with Ms Goward on April 17 to lobby funding for the upgrades and improvements to the school.

The upgrades outlined in the school's master plan, created before the 2012 fire, included a new school hall to fit the current and future school population, an administration block, demountables and educational facilities. 

Vice-president of the Yass High School P&C Jasmin Jones said that it is a wonderful chance to upgrade the school and compete, for the first time, with the infrastructure of the schools across the border. 

“Pru Goward came to visit the school and could see that the school needs some serious upgrades to meet the current and future needs,” Ms Jones said.

“She came to talk about how we proceed to meet the needs of the government.”

Ms Jones said that a petition is a terrific and practical way for the community to put this on the state government's agenda.

The new T-Block that has been built is the first step to making the improvements that the school needs and will be available for the students to use in the coming weeks. 

“It will change the way that teachers will be able to teach and will also allow us to get all the facilities of the school to the same calibre," Ms Jones said.

Parent Gillian Bucknell said that the future of the school is extremely important.

“The school was built for 250 students and it’s well beyond that now. We started fighting for this and we will keep on fighting until we get the complete package, it’s just not fair for the students and the staff,” Mrs Bucknell said.

Ms Goward told the Tribune she strongly believes that the funding needs to be higher up in the the Capital Works Plan. 

“We have to look at ways in which we can accelerate the amount of money that we invest in the school, it’s just terrible that we don’t have these upgrades,” she explained. 

She said that the first step will be to create and get residents to sign the petition.

“This will give the immediate sense of how strongly the community feels about this, so please Yass please sign it, we need a whole town campaign” she said.

 “Given the size of Yass which is about 9000 [residents] I think if we get 2000 it would be incredible.”

Ms Goward explained that the money they are asking for is not that much in terms of what the government spends on schools. 

“It is between $5 - 8 million depending on how you do a couple of things, that’s the ask and thats completely reasonable, we just have to keep on pursuing it.”

The petition will be available at different community businesses including the Yass Newsagency, Thyme to Taste, Yass Library, Yass Valley Council, Think Technology, Yass Jeweller, Yass Soldiers Club, Kids Blitz, Roses Cafe, Yass Real Estate, Delta Agribusiness and the Yass Tribune. Students will also be taking to the streets to encourage residents to sign in order to help improve their quality of education.