Last night was the beginning of the Informal Consultation period for Aberdeen City Council’s Estates strategy in respect to the proposed Bucksburn/Newhills merging and Stoneywood closure and re-zoning of children to the as-yet-undecided new school and Dyce school.
I felt it was a worthwhile evening. The attendees were split into about 6 smaller forums where ideas were taken on board by a scribe about the parent’s views on the proposals, all groups having the same questions. Myself and Catty were in a group of around 20 parents, predominately Stoneywood parents, however Stoneywood didn’t really have much to say. I took the lead trying to make sure the views of the Bucksburn Parent Council were heard. 
The main points I made were:
- Location of School - We don’t really think there’s any chance of the school being placed on the existing Bucksburn School site. Mark McDonald is against that site as he said in his speech, published on his blog. It’s a brilliant site with country views and although it’s close to the main A96 road it’s not actually ON it however Mark seems to have a vendetta with the site claiming it’s the worst site possible for a school in Aberdeen. Access for pupils is off the Howes Road. However we pretty much reckon the only place is the existing Newhills site. This has issues for parents coming from Bucksburn village and Mugiemoss etc. but where else is there?? The Bankhead site is in the flight path and the farmland above Newhills is further away for everyone! Also in relation to the siting be it at either site we recommend an investment in the development of Howes Road. It’s already closed to traffic making it ideal for children to use for their extended(but still within the magic 2 miles) journey’s.
- Size of school and in particular size of classes. Bucksburn pupils benefit from their class sizes as they are already. The new school itself will open at full capacity I feel. There are proposed developments for Mugiemoss and others. which is bound to increase the roll. David Leng himself showed the future increases expected just from the developments that already have planning permission. Never mind the ’speculative’ developments from the Rowett land, BP building etc. If it opens full where is the flexibility to include these pupils. If Stoneywood does close, which nobody really expects to happen, there’s an additional intake there as well. Dyce haven’t even been consulted about Stoneywood’s possible rezoning to themselves!
- ASN Base and the inclusion of the special needs kids. This was also brought up by a special needs worker with regards to Newhills blindness provisions and their inclusion in a new school.
- Traffic problems this will cause in the area.
- Safety concerns of the extended travelling.
- What Aberdeen City Council see as preferential is at times very different from what parents see as preferential, especially in respect to class sizes. ACC want every class to be operating at the very highest limits of what current legislation allows and in fact are designing the new schools on these numbers. Never mind that the Scottish government want to reduce class sizes.
Lots of what I was saying was echoed by parents from Newhills. It seems the consensus is that both schools are embracing the opportunity of a state of the art school and all the benefits that will bring to the pupils. Both schools are concerned about siting and roll however. It seems that Newhills have been in on the back end of these proposals as well, many parents who attended the forum meeting called by Bucksburn last month were shocked to learn of these proposals and the feeling last night was that even that meeting was badly publicised at short notice.
This brings me neatly on to my main bugbear with Bucksburn.
The parents couldn’t care less.
I’m on the parent council at Bucksburn and the main difficulty we have in our role as spokespeople for the views of the parents of Bucksburn pupils is that we don’t actually know what those views are! Parental inclusion is a nightmare. We beg parents to be more involved and we don’t actually have a politically correct idea of why there isn’t more enthusiasm from them.
My personal view is that they don’t give a shit about their kids lives out of the house, that’s for someone else to deal with. You see the same faces every meeting. Every time there’s anything to be discussed. Where are the rest of them? It’s a sad state of affairs when those charged with the care of the children in our community are the very people who are the least interested in that job. 
Come on Bucksburn, pull your socks up. The responses from Stoneywood school are fantastic. Newhills too had a bigger turnout last night than Bucksburn and it’s not anything to do with them having more parents, they have more parents who actually give a shit about their children. 
One of the things brought up at our last meeting was that parents don’t know what goes on at the parent council. We are going to display the minutes in the display box at the infant doors in future and I’m also about to either redesign the main school website (probably moving it to a better host and using joomla/drupal or something, anything’s gotta be better than frontpage) or start a separate Bucksburn School Council blog/news thing which will also tell of what’s being discussed with the advantage of giving the opportunity for parents who were unable to attend(or don’t care about attending) the meetings, to have their views recorded in writing.
