Save Scalloway School

[Trow87]

huge mistake has been made here....absolutely massively huge, if the main reason for closing scallowa is a financial one.

 

rampant incompetence rules the cooncil once again. anybody surprised?

[GypsyScy]

Well done to Skerries!!! At least one sensible decison was made today!

 

As far as Scalloway goes, personally, I'm gutted!!

I'm not looking forward to the bairns reactions this evening. When you know that most of the facts that they are basing this decision on are fabricated to suit thier own needs it's soul destroying.

 

The fact is we are paying for previous mistakes made by this incompetent shower in the town hall. Millions spent on the joke that was planning to build a new school and hundreds of thousands to pay off yer man. Scalloway is a brilliant school with brilliant teachers and fantastic pupils and will be a loss to not just Scalloway but Shetland as a whole as now the way is clear for all the further shut downs that will come. The closure of rural primaries is just sitting in a tray in the town hall waiting to be brought forward.

[exciseman]

(** mod edit - potentially libelous comment removed - mind the T&Cs! **)

 

I sympathise with the Scalloway community – I hope there is some recourse for them – perhaps in law and Manson and Angus get their deserved cum-uppance.

[JustMe]

ktl wrote

SIC Services committee will meet in the Town Hall on Tuesday 7 Dec. at 10 am to make its decision on whether or not to close Scalloway and Skerries secondary schools. This meeting will be chaired by Gussie Angus.

The public can attend this meeting, and a big turn out from parents, relatives, grannies and granddads and other folk from the community would be great.

On Wednesday, the full council will meet to make the final decision on closure. This meeting will be chaired by Sandy Cluness.

The presence of the public at these meetings could make a big difference to the outcome.

The decision to close schools will be for councillors and councillors alone.

We have a council that is trying to save money?. Yet they have a meeting today where all 22 of them under one chairman decide to close Scalloway Secondary department........22 presumably all claiming their expenses.......yet tomorrow they all meet again under a different chairman and could change the decision they made today.

 

Yes committees may make sense if it means a smaller group of councillors can consider something in greater depth than the full council but when the same people just change the leader and have another vote this becomes nonsense.

[beachcaster]

Well done to the Skerries community, and all the others who have helped in any way, for saving their school. It will be a huge relief for all the parents, children and the entire community.

 

Gutted that Scalloway is closing, a huge mistake by the councilors who voted to shut the school. I hope it comes back to bike them all in the ass. Hopefully the Scottish Office will reverse the decision and keep it open.

 

Unfortunately, I fear this is only round 1. Every primary school in the Scalloway catchment area will now be fair game for closure, as Scalloway will end up being a super primary.

[JustMe]

Well the above was my rant for the day so in more relaxed mode I have to ask what the rush is to close Scalloway J.H. Surely the logical time to do this would be when a new Anderson High School is ready for use or, should the council change their minds about that, when the current AHS is brought up to a suitable standard for the next couple of decades.

 

On a sort of tangent but I think relevant was the future of the existing Scalloway junior High buildings considered at the meeting. Certainly very relevant when discussing cost savings as simply mothballing the building will incur costs.

 

Also wondering just how far the costs of building a direct replacement for the AHS and building a replacement AHS that has space for the pupils from Scalloway compare. Answers to the full council tomorrow?.

[tivacudda]

Sadly, the deeply flawed decision to close Scalloway Secondary is not just financial, but part of the grander plan to rip Shetland education apart. Hence the hurry, and hence the decision to let Skerries be; it matters less to "them" in the grand scheme. Try asking some of the people making these recommendations just EXACTLY what they have in mind for these "Hub" Junior Highs. Remember to ask whether the bairns will be able to gain certification in the full range of subjects.

Try not to be reassured by promises of full consultation. I think we all know what that means.

[Wagon Wheel]

On radio shetland tonight Gussie is still going on about educational benefits. Nobody has yet been able to say what these are. He also spoke about the larger range of subjects available at AHS. Scalloway and the AHS offer the same number of subjects. If he had listened to or read any of the responses from Scalloway he would have known this.

[JustMe]

Since when, and sorry to Skerries folk for saying this, has the fact that parents are threatening to move away from their island if the Secondary Department of the local school (roll currently 3) is closed been considered as a good reason to keep it open?. School closures should either be decided on educational grounds or on the grounds of a cost saving and preferably both. Having heard one of the councillors saying that educationally the Skerries bairns might well be better at the AHS I am left wondering how tax payers will view the idea that the cost saving had to be balanced against the future of a small island.

 

Which brings me to Scalloway. Yes there might be a cost saving although I do wonder if the saving per pupil (another way to look at decisions) might work out less than that for Skerries. Let's try another approach for this. What is the cost per year for pupils in S1 to S4 at Scalloway compared to the same for the AHS?.

[exciseman]

Many of the councillors who voted to close Scalloway were in no way convinced by the lies of Manson and Angus – they were voting for closure in the hope that this may deflect from school closure in their areas

Shetland Islands Council is corrupt and rotten to the core – SIC is run by a clique of inept so-called senior councillors and equally inept senior council officials.

Over the years this unholy alliance has lost Shetland £millions through staggering incompetence and cover-up – because of the Audit investigation they have to be seen to be doing something and closing Scalloway Secondary is that something. Any new councillor who speaks up against this cabal either has to toe their line or is quickly sidelined and thus is unable to represent their community effectively. In the past many good councillors have not stood for re-election because they were unable to speak out or represent their electorate effectively.

This situation that has existed even before that chief architect of waste CE M. Goodlad took control. Before Goodlad CE Nick Riter was aware of this and tried to break the cabal and was got rid of extremely quickly for his pains.

This ruling elite of the SIC is virtually fire-proof – the COSLA investigation was a whitewash – Clueness and Simpson are still in post even after all that has happened and still blunder on in complete denial that anything wrong has occurred. Their answer is to hire at great expense CE from Orkney to save their hides – practically his first act is to hire a spin doctor with the sole purpose of putting up barriers between the SIC and the public by issuing ‘corporate line’ propaganda and deflect any public criticisms of their actions.

[Para Handy]

Gussie should be banned from the all the pubs and Clubs in Scalloway And any other amenities for a start

And all the others who voted to close the Scalloway School. Should be snubbed as well

They are no longer fit for purpose

[Graeme_Storey]

Bearing in mind the above comments, how can we (the ordinary folk) ever hope to have the councillors properly represent us, and the varied interests of the scattered parts of Shetland?

 

Is democracy really that dead in Shetland?

 

If it is, then, apart from voting in a whole new bunch next time (we have tried that many times already), how can we try to get things back on the right track?

 

There are some very decent, honest people among the councillors, and maybe we have to try and find ways to support them? I don't know.

[KTL]

What some councillors did to Scalloway today, other MSPs and MPs sitting far away will do to Shetland in the near future. What will these councillors say then?

 

Bells Brae and Sound Primaries parent councils appeared to lobby town councillors in favour of closure. Shame on them. Was this their own decision or one encouraged by a certain councillor?

 

How would they feel when decisions taken in Edinburgh or London to cut funding to their community was justified on the basis of a group in Edinburgh or London being used to lobby against them?

 

We are a small, remote island group with a tiny population which votes the same way every election. Imagine how that looks to a politician sitting in Edinburgh or London?

 

If Shetland communities do not stand together we will be picked off one by one and will all suffer because of it.

[snookerMCloopy]

Dodgy heating, pipes bursting, undersized, understocked canteen . . . the list goes on. These are just some of the MAJOR problems with the AHS already. Where is the logic in closing a school of a much higher standard?

 

Sack these clowns who voted for the closure of Scalloway.

 

If they are going to make a major decision like this they need to back it up with FACT. As has already been mentioned they claimed there are more subjects at Lerwick? Bull sh*t. This is a LIE. They actualy decide the columns of subjects for the 3rd and 4th at Scalloway depending on what the bairns want.

 

So looks like they are depriving the Scalloway catchment area of a very high standard of education, to put them to a rundown school to make everyone there have a lower standard of education. (undersized corridors classrooms etc)

 

They said the SJHS bairns would benefit from meeting more bairns, can't see where hes getting that but if its true, does'nt that contradict keeping Skerries open.

[Trow87]

They said the SJHS bairns would benefit from meeting more bairns, can't see where hes getting that but if its true, does'nt that contradict keeping Skerries open.

 

yep - totally. as do the vast majority of the other reasons for shutting scalloway rather than skerries.