Paul Gavin & Sandra Young
Paul Gavin and Sandra Young are the Deputy Principals of Sarah Redfern High School. Sandra has worked at the school since 1981 as an English and History teacher, and in the Deputy Principal position since 2005. Paul came to the school as Head Art Teacher in 1989. From 1991 until the present he has been Deputy Principal.

Sandra: We started off in 1981 with 400 students. So the school grew very, very quickly. At one stage we had around 1,100 to 1,200 kids in a school that was built for 850. Down the back we had so many demountables it wasn’t funny. It was always a school with a really good multicultural feel, right from the early days you had a variety of different cultures here.

Paul: The first time I was on playground duty, because there were no fences, there was only this painted red line, there was a lady walking through coming from Minto Mall with her shopping trolley! Even between the school and the library there was the major passageway and no fences, so the community was continually interacting with the school.

Sandra: And there would be police chases through the middle of the school. Yes! Absolutely! The philosophy of the community school was wonderful, but in terms of safety of children, it was very difficult, in that the community did have such easy access.

Sandra: My funniest memory was probably around 1992 when the circus was camped over the other side of Ben Lomond Road and one of our Year 8 students at the time, borrowed one of the elephants and took it up to his house in Valley Vista. They got it back, but the thought of this small wiry boy leading an elephant away was particularly amusing.

Paul: There was a new principal in 1990, Helen Hurley, who had a very strong focus on student support and student welfare, and that was also the year that the fence went up. The fence was good and bad. It was good as it defined the location and provided safety. The bad part was that it had six strings of barbed wire on the top. So whilst it was positive in one sense, it sort of sent this message across that the school is a gaol, it’s a prison. A lot of our students at that stage were coming from the Housing Commission homes where you had small blocks of land, there were no parks or gardens, if the school was the same then why would the kid want to come to school? So Helen thought if we present the school as a nice and inviting place, then the students would want to come. She put a lot of school funds into beautifying the school grounds and establishing gardens.

Sandra: One of our students I believe is a barrister, we have had a couple that have gone into medicine, a number of pharmacists, engineers. Think of any profession and we have had students going there. One of our more recent achievements was a boy of Lebanese background who went to UTS (University of Technology Sydney) and did Communication Engineering and ended up with First Class Honours.

Sandra: We have had some students become quite famous. Ann Robinson left, I think, in 2000, and actually during Australian Idol, she came into the school and stood in the middle of the playground and performed. Just to say thank you to the school. Ada (Nicodemou) I remember in Year 8 going out with Kevin McGuiness, who starred with Wests, Tigers. John Skandalis, before he went off to England, popped in to say goodbye and had some photos taken. He has always maintained his strong links with the school. Kenny McGuiness would come in. We have Koori Culture Day and he comes in and we have kids here out on the back oval and he’d be showing kids how to throw the boomerang.

Sandra: The Minto Renewal project is displacing many of our kids and really breaking up a community … So I sincerely hope that what replaces the old Housing Commission area becomes as tight and supportive as we have had for the last 30 odd years.

Paul: It has been soul destroying for families, and yes, they have been ripped apart. The exercise will either work or not work. That’s really what it comes down to. I don’t want to judge whether the community will be any better or worse, it will just be different.