Community
18 June, 2024
Tiny school, big heart
WITH just 10 students, the Daintree State School has rallied the community to celebrate the school’s centenary from June 21-23.
Hundreds are expected to attend the jam-packed program of events organised by the school in celebration of its 100th anniversary and, as its principal Jacqui Osborne called it, a celebration of the community overcoming its hardships in the aftermath of Cyclone Jasper.
From Friday to Sunday the program will be filled with mostly free events for families, kicking off on Friday afternoon with a meet and greet at the Daintree Village Hotel, a family fun day on Saturday at the school from 9am to 3pm, with food stalls, free entertainment for the kids, an unearthing of a time capsule, followed by an adult-only gala ball that night and a ‘recovery’ cricket game on Sunday morning.
“It’s not just a centenary celebration, it’s a community event,” Ms Osborne said.
“The whole community is involved, we’ve had a very active committee made of staff, students, past staff and community members so everything that we’ve planned is indicative of what the community wanted.
“We currently have an enrolment of 10 students and over the past 100 years it has ranged from 50-70 students. We’ve lost some enrolments recently due to the flooding and the school was going to be closed but the community rallied to prevent that from happening.
“The school is the backbone of the community and we have so much to celebrate after these very difficult past six months.”
Ms Osbourne said they were hoping to get hundreds of people to celebrate their most important event of the weekend, the family fun day.
“On Saturday, we have a family fun day that goes from 9am to 3pm and it’s a free event so the only expense for families will be food and drinks,” she said. “There are some local not-for-profit organisations that will be coming along that will have things to sell like roll-ons, muffins and lollies.
“We put a lot of effort into ensuring that every vendor that day is a not-for-profit organisation because our not-for-profits were the backbone of our community in the recent floods.
“All of the money raised will go back to the local not-for-profits or to the school.
“We will have the Mayor speaking for our official component and we will open the time capsule that was buried at our 75th jubilee.”
Ms Osborne urged the community to support the school, students, parents and families.
