A Wodonga school was forced to tell some students to stay at home as the fallout of its exclusion from the revised border bubble emerged from tougher rules implemented by the NSW government.
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Grace Christian College is located in one of the areas of Wodonga not included in the "blue zone" of the contracted border community hoping to be the frontline of defence in preventing coronavirus spreading into NSW from its southern neighbour.
The school, situated in Kinchington Road, Leneva, has 120 students with some based in NSW encouraged to remain home on day one of the new arrangements.
But ironically Victorian families with students at the school face the biggest challenges, according to principal Larry Gunn.
"Some of our parents cannot enter the school site to drop their children at school or collect them during the day if they are sick, because if they do come on the school site they have entered an excluded zone and they will not be permitted to enter NSW for work or other reasons for 14 days," he said.
"We advised all our parents to be cautious due to the ambiguity of the school being outside the border zone area and the possible impact on their permit status."
To strictly adhere to the updated permit, parents have been instructed to do drop off in Streets Road and children walk the rest of the way to the school in Kinchington Road.
In a further complication, Baranduda-based families cannot use Baranduda Boulevard to access the school and must drive the longer distance via Anzac Parade, Victoria Cross Parade and Beechworth Road.
The school is lobbying NSW government for inclusion in the "blue zone".
Streets Road is the "blue zone" boundary in the Leneva area with hundreds of residents on its southern side excluded along with residents on the northern side from Kite Place.
The "blue zone" extends to Drapers Road on the western side of Beechworth Road with Middle Creek the boundary for residents of Baranduda.
The entire Riverside housing estate in Killara, where more than 1000 people live, has also been left out the "blue zone".
"It seems ridiculous the way the boundaries have been drawn that Killara and parts of Leneva have been excluded," Riverside developer Andrew Stern said.
Wodonga Council chief executive Mark Dixon said it been meeting every day with the cross-border commissioners and police representatives regarding the border closures and the issues and concerns raised such as those being faced in Leneva and Killara areas.
"We are aware of areas of our municipality that have not been included in the 'border bubble' and are unable to get a permit to undertake the essentials of employment and education," he said.
"We have been lobbying very hard with the relevant stakeholders to have this changed and are hopeful of action on these anomalies in the next couple of days.
"We encourage our community to raise the issues they are experiencing due to these restrictions with the Victorian cross-border commissioner Luke Wilson and member for Benambra Bill Tilley who can also raise this issue directly with their NSW counterparts."
Residential areas on Huon Creek Road are also impacted by the decision.
"We could have very easily said 'that's the hard border, that's it', but we didn't because we respect and appreciate that those communities on the NSW-Victoria border have lived as one for a century," she said.
"We understand that and that's why we're going to so much effort to support them and I appreciate that there's always a fine line, it's never perfection, but the new system is only just come in and the Health Minister and I have also discussed, of course based on health advice."