By Shaun Inguanzo
FERNTREE Gully Primary School last week denied it is keeping honour rolls from the two world wars hidden away in a cloak room.
The claim was made last week by former Knox mayor Wally Tew, 90, who went to the primary school in the 1920s and served in World War II.
Last week the Mail reported the school was facing closure with student numbers set to drop below 100 next year.
The school held an information evening with parents on Thursday 15 September to discuss its amalgamation plans with Wattleview Primary School.
The school council will now decide whether to move ahead with its plan to leave the 130yearold Dorset Road location, and shift its staff, and any remaining students, to Wattle Tree Road, also in Ferntree Gully.
But Mr Tew said the school’s wartime honour rolls, boards which contain the names of students who served in the two world wars, would not go to Wattleview if he could help it.
Mr Tew told the Mail he was unhappy with the current position of the boards in the school’s hallway because they appeared to be “hidden away in a cloak room.”
School principal Pauline Fargie denied the claim.
“They are in the main hallway as you go into the historical building where the classes are; they are visual whenever anyone walks into the building,” Ms Fargie said.
But Mr Tew said jackets and jumpers were being hung around the boards when he last visited three years ago.
Mr Tew last week wrote a letter to the school asking that the boards be given to the Boronia branch of the RSL.
He said it would follow the relocation of a vandalised memorial from the school’s grounds to the Knox War Memorial in Dorset Road several years ago by the RSL.
Ms Fargie said the decision on the boards lay with the Department of Education, but hoped the honour rolls would be put in the “most appropriate place for them”.
“I think the plan certainly would be that archival things are placed in appropriate places, and if (the RSL) is the best place then so be it.”
Heroes ‘not hidden’
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