Please email or write to the four local councillors who represent Forth Ward. There are a number of important points about the closure of Fort and the resulting merger of these two schools that can be brought out in these letters and a few of these are listed below:
- The proposal is not to close Fort permanently — it will be either mothballed or converted into offices until the harbour housing developments leads to a growth in the school population. The council’s own figures predict a growth of 150 in the school population in this area while the proposal is supposed to be targeting areas where the population will remain low. As the building and land are not being sold the council will not make any money from selling the site but will have additional costs to either secure the site or convert and then convert it back in the future!
- How will a school that has a notional capacity of 415 accommodate 456 pupils? Remember that the school capacity was only increased to 456 following a recent energy efficiency saving. Trinity’s capacity has been conveniently increased from a 14 class school (which has been the case since it opened in 1968) to a 15 class school without the school or parent council being advised of the change!
- Trinity currently has 12 classes, including 2 composite classes and is a very busy and lively school. How will it accommodate 3 additional classes?
- If this increased capacity costs the school its IT Suite, library, support for learning room or science room how will the council ensure that the education of your children is unaffected by the loss of these facilities?
- Be under no illusions, the proposed merger is already affecting the children at Trinity Primary ahead of the outcome of the ‘consultation’ exercise. As you may be aware, our head was recently seconded to Fort Primary School and this has led to reassignment of experienced teaching staff to management roles within the school.
- As a result of any merger and the increase in school numbers there would be many changes within the school that would directly affect our children’s education. Composite classes that have been together for a number of years may be broken-up. Out-of-district families may find that younger siblings are unable to get a place at Trinity. The after-school clubs are now full and will be unable to accommodate additional children.
Please don’t worry this if you feel you are not good at writing letters, hopefully the points above help and there is a template letter available on the downloads page. It is much more important that we show our councillors that many of us believe this proposal is not in the best interests of our children.