Download the minutes here

Attending: Sam Nicholson, Andrew Montford, Karen Hogarty, Ian Rose, Willie Campbell, Duncan Summervail, Katharine Gunn, Denise Wilson, Heather Hutchinson. Apologies: Trish Jackson

The first meeting of 2009 was very busy with a huge amount of ground covered.

The usual admin points were covered: website visits were still slow, but OK. Willie had failed to get elected to the Lifelong Learning Committee (hurrah!). PKC have been keeping themselves occupied over recent weeks and this time sent a Parent Council newsletter and a document on bullying.

We still have £929 in the bank. KG suggested we could spend it on the ECO club. We discussed how this could be tied to the funding’s aim of improving parental involvement. A garden party and sports equipment were discussed as ways to acheive this. KG will produce a budget for what the ECO club might need. Plans for the other activities will be put together once this is done.

Curriculum info was discussed. Nobody is available from the council to tell us about Curriculum for Excellence, so the school will do something instead. We will gauge interest first. Last time round we had talked about the curriculum information that parents want. SN has got hold of similar info from Limekilns PS, and leaflets adjusted to Fossoway’s circumstances are being prepared.

Parental involvement covered areas like parents in the playground (the children don’t like it - a note will be sent to parents by the student council). We also talked about the high school campus. Someone from the council wants to come and talk about it. We will do a website posting which will allow people to post comments and questions for the talk. We need to set a date first, and Sam N will come up with some suggestions.

Group call (the text messaging service for the school) is going forward, and the PKC steering committee will meet in Feb.

The school survey of parent opinion will go forward largely unchanged from the draft Sam N showed us. It will be billed as a joint FS/FSC production.

Safer Routes to School took up a lot of time.  A number of emails have been received putting parents’ views.

• Willie C has been speaking to Mike Barnacle about crossings at the petrol station or the institute. This is in the long term strategy and might be done as part of the A977 mitigation works. MB says he can try push to push it up the agenda if we wish.
• The bridge at the scout camp is an unknown quantity. No funding is available so parents should not be holding their breath for this. WALC are dealing with this.
• The footpath from the Institute to the playing fields is in the budget and the land has been acquired.
• Traffic calming is covered by a £250k allocation in the budget, but most will go to Blairingone and Balado.
• The footpath opposite the Institute  was discussed. Barriers and footpath widening  are possibilities, but the most that is likely is a fence that will keep children off the road (not cars off the pavement).
• A sign for the school is needed on the A977 (the existing one being on the Back Crook)

The walking bus is going ahead. £400 has been received. Organising it and making sure it continues to operate are likely to be issues. The road safety officer will inspect the route and risk assess it. A subcommittee was set up to deal with this consisting of WC, IR, KG, SN.

Next meeting is 23 Feb at 6pm.

Categories: Safer Routes to School, School Council