Wee southender, I appreciate you coming back to clarify - so I would like to do likewise, I know that this is an all-consuming important issue and people will get emotional and hot under the collar about it - others will use it to attempt to make political mileage, which we've seen already on here. Please believe me I do understand it. I went to Glenbarr Primary School, now also under threat, there were about 45 kids in the school in them days, my brothers kids would all hope to go there in future, but its situation is just as difficult as Southend’s, I will do what I can for both.
First to clarify, and excuse me if this is a bit long winded!
the school estate ( all the school buildings) have been under review since well before the current economic crisis. The thinking behind that review was that there were schools in Argyll & Bute which were costing a great deal per pupil to run, they were suffering from chronic under investment in maintenance. It was considered that there was capacity within the estate to reasonably relocate a proportion of teachers and pupils to reduce costs without affecting the standard of education.
Various seminars took place to get the views of elected members, and to explain the condition of the school estate. I think it is fair to say that there was a significant number of Councillors who felt that the education budget was overly protected, and should be trimmed to ensure that there were sufficient funds to address the major problems of the time - the roads maintenance, Argyll & Bute historically has the worst roads in Scotland. I am pretty sure all the local councillors attended these initial seminars. I did at that time highlight the importance of rural schools to much more than just the education of the children, the very existence of communities now-a-days can depend on the public facilities they have such as schools.
The outcome of these seminars was a presentation which took place over 6 months ago, All councillors were invited, I think all councillors bar a few, made th effort to attend. It was made clear that the presentation was not in any way supposed to represent proposals. Indeed it was insisted that members treated the presentation as confidential as they were only ideas which were liable to change significantly the seminar was to see if the ideas presented represented the kind of school proposals that might sit easily with the elected members - That was the first time Southend was mentioned - Both Rory and I went up like Roman candles - Rory even uttered the immortal lines "over my dead body". Given the assurances we had that there was no proposal and that members would be further consulted if there would be, I did not consider it worth worrying anyone about the proposal by leaking the information. Crying wolf would have caused me lots of problems with trust when dealing with future issues with council officers and would have been viewed very differently by the community if id cried wolf and nothing happened. Given the assurance that consultation would take place, I felt fairly comfortable that we were covered. And I think we are. Without knowing the detail that we now know, it would have been pointless mounting a challenge then, as there would have been nothing to challenge.
This has taken me 2 hours to put together - 2 hours of my time wasted that i might have been working with you. I hope we can use this forum as a positive force to fight for the school instead off bickering amongst ourselves - so lets ALL go for it
