Minutes of School Council Meeting of 16th October 2008

Present:

Alison Noble (AN)
Angela Christie (AC)
Lucy Gallagher (LG)
Claire Ford (CF)
Norman Brown (NB)
June Underwood (JU)
Jane Davidson (JD)
Guy Morgan (GM)
Sean Byrne (SB))
Elke Versmessen (EV)
Alison Platts (AP)
David Coombs (DC)
Apologies:

Bruce Cameron
Clem Friend
Tasneem Irshad

Head Teacher’s Report

AN presented the Headteacher’s Report. A separate copy of this will be circulated to members. This included the key objectives for the school in its improvement plan. Comment from parents is welcome.

Finance

AP gave an update on the current financial position. The School Council has £9,500 in the bank at present.

There was discussion about whether to advertise for a Clerk, or to ask the Council for the money to be paid directly to the Council. There was agreement that the Council should have a paid for Clerk and an advert will go in to the Sciennes Flyer (NB).

The suggestions for spending for this year were discussed. Ideas included:

Digital Cameras – so far 13 have been bought, with an aim of having one available for every class
Books – Oxford Reading Tree and novels
Camcorder – two
Staging – currently the school borrows some pieces from the Cannongate Youth Project
Christmas decorations

The money raised by the Swimathon has been ring fenced for swimming and tennis for pupils, and the Book Fair money for novels for the library.

The aim is to have a costed and prioritised list for discussion (AN/AP)

JU advised the meeting that the Clubs and Events Group are looking to sell a discount booklet which provides discounts to a number of venues, restaurants, events etc. For each one sold, the school will received £5. Since there is no minimum commitment, there is to financial risk.

Climate Challenge Fund

AN There was further discussion about how the School Council could get a Climate Challenge Fund application developed. Since this is likely to be a fairly time consuming activity, it was decided to hold an open meeting for parents to try and form a sub-group to take this forward. A date of 20th November was agreed.


Any other business

Class lists were updated during Parent Consultations. These are now being collated.

Electronic communications – a number of new parents have signed up to this. AC hopeful that distribution lists will be updated before the end of November.

End of meeting.

City Council 2009 Budget Consultation

The City Council has launched a brief consultation on their web site at:

http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/internet/Council/Council_Business/Council_consultations/CEC_council_budget_2009_10

This takes only a few minutes to complete but is an opportunity for you to let them know your priority areas for spending.  Hopefully if enough people put Education as a high priority, schools share of the budget might be protected.

Climate Challenge Fund - Volunteers Wanted!

The School Council is looking to make an application for funding to the Climate Challenge Fund.

The Climate Challenge Fund offers grants to a range of community organisations to help with the planning, learning, communication and most importantly, action to reduce carbon emissions. The projects can involve a range of actions, from helping us to use less energy, or walk and cycle more, to local sustainable food. The projects should be delivered in the context of the wider environmental, social and economic dimensions, that give people new skills, improve health, help them to work together or provide better community facilities, but carbon reduction must be at the heart of every proposal.

To help us develop an application that gets the best for the Sciennes community we are looking for volunteers to help us by:

- lending either professional advice and guidance (e.g. on environmental issues or in making funding applications);
- bringing enthusiasm into a small group who will develop and submit the bid;
- coming forward with ideas which help us to ensure the bid considers all of the areas in which it could benefit the School community.

The first meeting to kick start the process will be in the School on 20th November at 7pm. You are welcome to come along either to this meeting only to find out more about the Climate Challenge Fund and to contribute your ideas, or if you want to volunteer to be part of an going Climate Challenge group.

You can find out more about the Climate Challenge Fund here:

http://www.infoscotland.com/ourfuture/61.html
http://www.keepscotlandbeautiful.org/ccf.asp
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/SustainableDevelopment/funding/ClimateChallengeFund/


There is more information about Climate Change produced by the World Development Council, a paper on Climate Change Controversies by the Royal Society and details of the projects which have been awarded funding by the Climate Challenge Fund so far at:

http://sciennescouncil.googlepages.com/home

To help us with numbers, please email sciennescouncil@gmail.com if you intend to come along.

We look forward to seeing you on the 20th.

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Next School Council Meeting

The next meeting of the School Council is at 7pm on Thursday 16th October. All welcome.