PARENTS PROTEST AS GLASGOW COUNCIL HOLDS SECRET MEETING WITH HEAD-TEACHERS

At Education Offices, Wheatley House, Cochrane St (off George Sq)

9am, Friday 1st May


Parents from closure-threatened schools and nurseries are staging an angry protest outside a secret meeting between the Labour Council and head-teachers from the schools affected, demanding entrance to the meeting and for the Council to stop trying to rail-road through their closures.

Glasgow Save Our Schools Campaign organiser, Richie Venton, today said:

“This meeting is typical of the Labour Council’s methods.

“It is secretive; parents discovered it by pure chance.

“It is exclusive; parents and carers whose kids are threatened with traumatic moves were not even informed, let alone invited to it.

“And it is another attempt to rail-road through the closures; the Labour council knows full well that we are mounting legal challenges to their immoral closure procedures, and taking our case to the Scottish parliament, yet they want to bamboozle and browbeat people by making it appear the closures are done and dusted.

“Parents are demanding an invitation to the meeting. We condemn the Labour council for excluding the very people whose families are at risk from their education cuts.

“The people of Glasgow will not be denied their voice by Labour’s dictatorship – the fight to obstruct and prevent these closures continues; the schools are still there; and the will to resist closures has hardened in the face of the Labour Council’s obscene disregard for kids and communities.”



For more info contact Richie Venton on 07828 278 093 or at richieventon@hotmail.com



END

Glasgow Save Our Schools Campaign

PRESS RELEASE … for immediate use (21st April)



RESISTANCE TO SCHOOL CLOSURES SPREADS – SUPPORT FROM TRADE UNIONS



As decision-day at the Glasgow city council looms, parents and carers have won fresh allies in the battle to save the schools and nurseries on Labour’s amended hit-list for closure. Parents staged sit-ins at two schools just two days after the 15-day sit-ins ended, and a delegation from the city-wide Glasgow Save Our Schools Campaign won support from several trade unions at the STUC Congress in Perth.



Glasgow Save Our Schools Campaign organiser, Richie Venton, today said:



“Protests are breaking out like bush fires beneath the backsides of the Labour councillors on the eve of the Council meeting on Thursday.

“Those who staged the sit-in at Victoria school were applauded for their courage by a huge crowd of local people as the came out of the building.

“Parents on the roof-top protest at Our Lady of Assumption in Ruchill have shown immense determination in resisting the closure, and there is no excuse for the Council’s over-reaction, dumping kids in another school, because the protest in no way would interfere with the kids’ education – it’s the council’s planned closure that does that!

“A delegation of us travelled to meet delegates at the annual Congress of the Scottish Trade Union Congress. We won massive support from several trade unions who recognise that the cuts in staffing levels, rise in class sizes, threats to parents’ ability to hold down jobs, and assault on community facilities are all issues that trade unionists should take up.

“Given the historic link between Labour and the unions, they would do well to ponder the widespread support for the campaign to stop the closures that union leaders and delegates expressed

This campaign will not go away – we are finding fresh allies in the fight for local community schools with smaller class sizes.”



For more info contact Richie Venton on 07828 278 093 or at richieventon@hotmail.com



END

Occupation over! Parents leave in defiance of the bullying Glasgow City Council Labour Group...

Preparations for leaving, song, interviews and cleaning...



“The city council threatened that unless the sit-ins ended by Friday at 3pm they would punish the children of the entire Wyndford area on Monday morning, telling parents they could not even enter the playground, would have their kids snatched off them in the car park, stuck on buses, and dragged off to the schools the Council want to dump them in after their planned closure of Wyndford and St Gregory’s.

“This action is an abuse of the law, the actions of playground bullies, and an attempt to intimidate and above all divide the local community.

“They failed, as all cowards deserve to fail. The parents and carers in the sit-ins are responsible people. They refused to allow the Council to dictate to them, but also refused to allow the council to use their children as hostages in a dirty attempt to divide and defeat local people who want to save the schools.

!”So they are coming out at a time of the campaigners’ choosing, which leaves the Council with absolutely no excuse for barring young kids from entering the schools they are familiar with and want to return to on Monday morning.

“It is the Council which all along has sought to disrupt kids’ lives and education – not the people fighting to save the schools.

“Those who have sacrificed their family Easter to heroically do battle with a heartless Labour Council will be greeted as heroes by a crowd of campaigners and community members as they leave the buildings.

“And they have pledged to fight by all other means up to and well beyond the Council meeting on 23rd, unless the Council does the decent thing and reverses its closure plans.”



For more info contact Richie Venton on 07828 278 093 or at richieventon@hotmail.com

Parents Fightback!

Parents fightback over the decimation of their communities and children's education. Hundreds march through Glasgow to the City Chambers to let the councillors inside know that OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE COMES FIRST!

Parents vow to continue sit-in until primary schools saved

FROM THE GLASGOW HERALD, 15 April 2009 (Video footage from The Glasgow Herald).

Wyndford and St Gregory's occupiers defiant!

Video from inside the Occupied Schools!

The Occupiers Speak! Richie Venton, Glasgowe Save Our Schools Organiser, in discussion with the women occupying St Gregory's Primary and Wyndford Primary in Maryhill, Glasgow.

Campsie Donation

Campsie Scottish Socialist Party branch have raised £30 and are buying groceries for the two occupied schools in Maryhill, Glasgow. The grocery's will be delivered today, the third day of occupation. The occupations began on Friday after school broke up for the Easter holidays. These brave and principled parents, grandparents and campaigners are currently occupying the Wyndford Primary School and St. Gregory's primary School. They are protesting at the proposed closure of the schools - both schools being at the heart of the Wyndford community.

Glasgow City Council have proposed that 25 schools and nurseries - at the heart of communities across the City - should be closed in their game of political football with the SNP Government. The Labour run council, and it's leader, Steven Purcell, are trying to impress their Labour bosses by making it impossible for school classes to reduce to the 20 or less proposed by the SSP and subsequently enacted upon by the SNP Government.

Purcell, who has designs on being the Labour Leader in Scotland, is more concerned about his career than the jobs of Education workers or the education of our children.

Call in and visit the schools to show your support! And if you have a website/blog, link to their sites -

http://stgregorysoccupation.blogspot.com/

http://sosglasgow.wordpress.com/