Fight the unfair changes to the Kintore Area school catchment zone

Dear Councillors,

Please reject the unfair, unconsulted-on proposals to change the catchment of Merrylee Primary School. Our objections are: 1. The amended proposals are significantly and substantially different from the proposals that went out for public consultation. In the original proposals, our area of 337 houses was included in the Merrylee catchment zone, and an area around Cathcart of 573 houses was excluded. The amended proposals have switched these areas - now we are out and Cathcart is in. That is a change of 910 houses - over 25% of the addresses involved in the whole consultation. You can tell at a glance that the new map is significantly different to the original map. We believe a court will agree with us. Education Services say that this change is "not substantial" because our area was a shared area before and we have established links with Battlefield. This is wrong. Most of the catchment area that has been considered in the consultation consists of shared areas. If changing ours is "not substantial", changing any of them is "not substantial" - why then was there a consultation at all? Very few families in our area choose to send their children to Battlefield - just one child out of seven registered for P1 this year. 2. The changes would tear our community apart. Families in our neighbourhood strongly identify with the Merrylee area and depend on its amenities - the school, the play park, the shops, the tennis club, the nursery, the churches, the allotments. Our kids have established friendships within the community, which are now under threat at this vital, transitionary stage in their young lives. There are natural geographic boundaries to our area that make going to Battlefield Primary impractical, and potentially dangerous. There is no direct road access. Children will have to walk across the busy Kintore Road (soon to be a construction zone), down an isolated alleyway, and across a poorly maintained footbridge over the fast-flowing White Cart Water to get to school. 3. We have much stronger links to Merrylee than the area of Cathcart that was originally excluded from the catchment, but is now included, at our expense. - We are a maximum ten minutes walk from the school, they are a minimum of twenty minutes away. - We can almost see the school from our houses and are separated only by one main road. They are on the far side of a river, a railway and a main road. - We have always been in the catchment for Merrylee - they have only been part of it since 2009. For the children who will be negatively affected by this rushed plan, we ask you to reject these unfair proposals and: - Keep the Kintore area within the Merrylee/Highpark catchment area OR - Re-open the consultation Yours, The Kintore Area Community