Calling all Council Nursery Parents and Carers! You are invited to a Planning Meeting with parents and carers from all 14 Council Nurseries now under threat of closure.
We will be discussing what to do at the Council meeting on 13 March, including a protest outside the Council House by parents with placards, the presentation of petitions to Council and the submission of public questions to Councillor Rice, the Cabinet Member responsible for Day Nurseries.
We’ll also be planning for a delegation of parents to meet Councillor Carl Rice.
Please bring any other ideas that you have to the meeting.
Support for the campaign to save the Nurseries is growing. Come to the meeting and plan how we can keep the pressure up!
Picture from the Save Our Nursery Fun Day at Summerfield Nursery on Monday 19 February, sent by Debbie Waldron one of the parent campaigners.
Draft letter to Councillors
Dear Councillor …
I am writing to you as a parent of a child at … Nursery, which is one of the 14 Council nurseries currently threatened with closure. I am asking you to support the campaign to keep …Nursery open. It provides an excellent service for our children and their families in one of the most socially deprived areas of the city, and lays the foundations for our children’s future success at schools. The Council claims that this is one of their priorities so I urge the Council to ensure that this and the other nurseries under threat remain open and fully funded.
I recognise that the Council’s budget is subject to government cuts and that there may be savings that can be made by each nursery without reducing the quality of provision. This issue was raised by officers in their presentation at the consultation meeting. But no detailed information was provided of the current financial situation of the nursery or of possible savings and also steps to increase income. I call on the Council to make such information about each nursery publicly available, so that parents, staff and community members can be fully informed, and that a further opportunity is then provided for their views to be taken into account and included in any report to Cabinet.
I also recognise that such savings may well not be sufficient to overcome the current deficit for this and other nurseries. I therefore call on the Council, on the basis of the immense social value that the nurseries contribute to children, families and communities in areas of the city of priority social need, to commit to increasing the overall Day Nurseries Budget to cover any remaining deficit and thus keep the nurseries open.
Kind regards …
[You may need to amend this, for example “I am writing to you as a supporter of …”. Or changing “I” to “We” if more than one person signs. Also feel free to change any of the wording as you wish. ]
The Save Our Nurseries campaign is supported by parents with children at the nurseries, by local community members, and by the GMB, NEU-NUT and Unison staff unions, the Kashmiri Women’s Council, Birmingham Trades Union Council, Birmingham Against the Cuts and People’s Assembly.
Contact the campaign at bkwc_uk@yahoo.com
Birmingham Against The Cuts 