Dear Sir,
I am a Governor at Vane Road Primary School and I want to use the medium of the Newton News to highlight what I believe to be a really poor decision made by the Council.
Despite the strenuous rejection by the school of a request from the Council to use the school on 6th May for the Elections, we have now received a letter from them stating that there is no alternative. You and I will both know that there are many alternatives but it appears that the Council simply aren’t prepared to consider them.
Whilst the school is, as you know, a new build and it was designed to enable it to be used as a Polling Station, without having to close the school, I feel that the fact that there will still be significant restrictions on society at that time, shows that the Government believe that the risk of the Covid-19 virus being transmitted in the community will still be high. For this reason, if we have to hold the Elections in school, I don’t believe that it would be safe to keep the children in school at the same time.
I feel that this is wholly unacceptable and the school has written to the Head of Education, Richard Crane, and the Local MP, Paul Howell, to raise our serious concerns. I believe that there was an agreement by Government, that if the elections were to take place in May, that schools would not be used as they have been disrupted enough this year. This however seems to have been ignored, particularly in so far as Vane Road is concerned.
The children have lost so much education over the last year that my view is that the children need to be in school, but more importantly, they (and staff) need to be kept safe and having voters on school site during this time would compromise this. I would ask that any reader of this article use any influence that they might have to try and get this absurd decision overturned.
David Knight
(Governor, Vane Road Primary School).
