Courier article: "Parents to join schools project"

As reported on p5 of The Courier, 1 June 2009 (not available online):

A well-attended public meeting yesterday gave a mandate to the West End Parents group to pursue their concerns over the planned merger of St Joseph's and Park Place Primary schools on the site of the former Harris Academy annexe.

Chairman Kiran Oza said their next step will be to meet officials of Dundee City Council education department as soon as possible to become involved in the planning process and ensure their concerns are addressed.

He said, "The council is proceeding with their plans and it is important we engage with that. At the education committee on May 11 (when councillors voted to combine the two schools and the Park Place Nursery) it was said they were setting up a number of groups, including a project group and an implementation group, and we would look to get involved with those groups."

Mr Oza said the principal issues raised from the floor of the meeting, held at Club Romano, included whether the council conformed to existing legislation in trying to do all they want at the site, and questions on parking and traffic.

"There was also concern that officials have said they would look at tarmac or concreting over the area as a solution to possible contamination at the site. People were unhappy about this as both are porous and we will need to get some advice on that", Mr Oza said.

Parents have complained the site has insufficient space for playing fields.

Paused, reflected and re-opened!

So, we've all paused for over a week now. All visitors have had an opportunity to reflect on the comments that were being posted and we can hopefully look forward to more constructive comments in future.

We're going to re-open the website to allow comments to blog entries, but these will be checked before publishing to the website. The comments may have to be edited and in extreme cases may not be allowed at all.

Guidance is as before: keep your comments on topic and avoid making unkind references to private individuals or groups. For further content guidance, please see Google's Blogger Content Policy.

For those people who were able to attend the Club Romano meeting a couple of weeks ago, thanks again for your time and contributions. We hope that the information presented was of interest and has encouraged you to consider the council's proposal and the way in which the consultation process has been conducted.

Meeting at Club Romano

Today's meeting at Club Romano was a great success! It was well-attended with over 50 parents, parishioners, residents, councillors, press and other interested parties. The presentations were well received and everyone participated in an open, fair, informative and reasoned debate.

We are delighted that so many people came to listen and ask questions, despite the lure of the sunny weather outside the club - thank you.

We hope that the handouts at the meeting will provide you with information to help you write to your local Councillor, who is an elected member of the Education Committee. This information will be published on the website in the near future. The Director's report is anticipated imminently and we look forward to reading this.

We have added a proforma letter to the website and you can print it or download and modify it if you wish to share your concerns with your local Councillor, or to one of the 5 non-elected members.

The consultation period ended on 6 April, but we anticipate that the Committee will vote on the proposal at the next meeting, which is scheduled for 27 April. Therefore it is very important that you write to your Councillor urgently. We have already sent them the handouts but please let them know of any specific or additional concerns that you may have.

The list of all 29 Councillors and their contact details (phone, address, email, surgery dates/times) is available on the Dundee Council website.

Please also continue to raise awareness of the concerns about the size and suitability of the site by sharing this information with your friends and neighbours.