It’s in three parts, the first is an overview, the 2nd(Bucksburn) and 3rd(Newhills) concentrate on the individual sites(yes, only 2 sites were considered, yes I know we weren’t involved despite promises that we would be…*rolls eyes*).

Part 1 (.doc[4.1MB] | .pdf[549kB])
Part 2 (.doc[11.5MB])
Part 3 (.doc[10.1MB])

There are no pdf versions of 2 & 3 because they become insanely huge(over 60MB each)

Because these are fairly large documents I’ve converted them to html and put them on this site so you can read them online, direct access at

http://bucksburn.info/FR

but please note some formatting is lost in the automatic conversion.

Happy reading, comments below!

All parents should note that it is no longer acceptable to park in the Police Office car park because of inconsiderate drivers. The Police offered the use of their car park during drop off and uplift times over the last couple of years to alleviate congestion on Howes Road and reduce the danger to our children. Incidents by parents have caused this kind offer to be retracted, to the shame of the people involved. Please do not use the Police car park even if there is no more room on Howes Road. Find somewhere else to park.

In a similar vain and in order to ensure the continuing safety of the children forced to cross at Howes Road drivers should note that the Police will be enforcing the double-yellow lines with tickets given out for dangerous parking. Any parking on the double yellows in this area will be considered dangerous parking as there have already been incidents of collisions between car and child, so be warned! Thankfully so far this term there seems to be less congestion on the Howes Road so this should not be a problem.

It was also raised that there may be an unawareness of the upcoming September long weekend so the dates for your diary for that are the Friday/Monday of 25th and 28th of September. The parent council try to publish any dates of note in our Diary page, including the term times and holidays for 2010-2015, exclusive of in-service days I believe.

If you were the person searching for “Was School X closed today?” I fear you may have gotten here too late?
(school name removed to save your blushes)

Angela and Sarah (+1) will be (hopefully) going in front of the full council to present/appeal/plead/beg on our behalf.

There is no more we can do after this so it’s imperative that if you can possibly venture out in the (hopefully dry by Monday) weather please do.

We need to make absolutely sure we have a coherent argument for them to take us seriously. It’s the last gasp effort. Really.

Aberdeen City Council meet on 11th February at the Town Hall to make their final vote on the proposition as set out by the Culture and Learning, Neighbourhood Services (North) department of the council.

Public attendance at this meeting is offered if you turn up before 2PM. We are in the process of seeing if we can get a group of parents together to make a more formal representation to the council at this time before they vote. This really is the final opportunity to show the councillors that they need to disregard the case as produced and recommended by Culture & Learning, something that they are unlikely to do even with this representation.

Newhills PC have drawn up a petition which I encourage all parents to sign and I will endeavour to make this available to all parents ASAP. I would encourage parents at Bucksburn to communicate with Newhills at this time, we are both working very hard at achieving a common goal. Both schools serve their communities in the way required by those communities, neither favour the merger and the amalgamation will be the death knell of that special something which cannot be measured that I know Bucksburn, and am sure Newhills, has.

So this is it folks. Can we show the council that they need to listen to the huge public opinion on this matter and do what they were voted in to do – represent their constituents? OR, do we just let THEM tell US what’s going to happen instead?

It’s your school, YOU DECIDE!

You can also download the site as a podcast by pointing your podcast client towards http://podcasts.odiogo.com/bucksburn-school-parent-council/podcasts-xml.php or if you use itunes just click here.

It’s free and automatically generated and yet it’s surprisingly good quality. This should help enable those who can’t read the posts easily for whatever reason to better access our information.

Thank you for your email regarding the proposed amalgamation of
Bucksburn & Newhills Schools.

Regarding the options you have outlined.

A refurbishment of the school would, in my opinion, be both extremely
disruptive and extremely expensive.

There would require to be extensive, intrusive construction work, and
given the age of the buildings the likelihood of asbestos being present
is high. This means that works would require children to be relocated
and decanted for a period of time while work was undertaken. This period
of time could be considerable.

The construction of two new schools may also be cost prohibitive.
While, on the face of it, it may seem like dividing £8million by two,
the reality is that the costs would be higher than that of building one
new school. It is unlikely the capital budget could incorporate the
level of expenditure required for two new schools in the Bucksburn
area.

I firmly believe that a new, state of the art facility, would be an
exciting opportunity for Bucksburn as a community, and I would be
looking for any feasibility study which is considered to examine both
sites which are currently occupied by Bucksburn and Newhills
respectively.

I am aware that there are a number of factors surrounding any
amalgamation which would need to be considered, but at present I still
feel it is the best option on the table.

I will await the outcome of the consultation process.

Regards

Mark McDonald

Dear All,

Many thanks to the 5 parents who attended the meeting held at the Beacon Community Centre on Wed 10th Sept.

A short presentation was given by CLICC, before the floor was opened up to the parents for questions, after which, the group agreed that CLICC should take on the management of the project.

CLICC will now proceed to write their own business plan before registering with the Care Commission. This is a process that can take anything from 3 to 6 months, but due to the work that has already been put in place by the Development Officers, the process will hopefully not take quite as long.

All further developments will be carried out by CLICC, and I imagine that they will contact families from all three schools in due course.

Best wishes for the future

Kind regards

Elaine Allan

Childcare Development Officer
Aberlour Children’s Services
& Training & Assessment Centre (CSTAC)
Early Years Service Centre
Silverburn Lodge
Claymore Drive
Bridge of Don
Aberdeen AB23 8GD

Hopefully we’ll have a fully functioning out-of-school care system set up soon in Bucksburn/Newhills.