08 Oct 2011
The My School website will open on Friday March 4th. You will find a great deal of information about DHS and other schools on this site, some of which may be unclear. If you have any concerns, please come to the next P&C meeting on March 10, 7.30 pm in the school library, where the Deputy Principal will note any concerns that you have. These will be dealt with in detail at the following P&C meeting when the Principal will be present.
It is very important to remember that the financial information about DHS is an average of all NSW Department of School Education schools across the state, not actual funds available to us at this school. The data notes all money that comes into the school as "recurrent income". This includes teachers' salaries and all support services provided to government schools by the DET, such as Legal Services and Regional and District Office staff. The averaging of funds also includes those high cost schools such as Juvenile Justice, Schools for Special Purposes and schools in very remote areas of the state. The average comprehensive school such as DHS does not cost the government nearly as much to run as these other expensive but vital operations. I only wish that we did receive the amounts listed in this financial data, particularly the contributions and donations. 660 students receiving $11,000 would give us $7,260,000 per year - a lovely dream, but not the practical reality we deal with daily.
The "capital expenditure" on DHS will appear very generous, as it was - this amount of funding covers our major building program in 2009, when the new buildings and renovations to older classrooms were occurring. This is a highly unusual level of capital expenditure and we were and remain very grateful for this injection of funds into our school. I don't expect this level of funding to recurr in my remaining tenure as Principal or many years thereafter.