Minutes of Meeting held on Wednesday 24 March 2010
Present: Neil Donaldson (Chair), Alison Chambers, Fiona Hendrie, Clare Mason, Lauren Morrison, Susan Robertson, Sue Samson, Anne Shepherd, Kate Silk, and Pam Thomson
1. Apologies: Fiona Wall, and Mike Vickers.
2.Minutes of Last Meeting: Minutes of the LAA committee meeting on 28 April 2010 were approved.
3. Financial Report: Pam reported:
Bank Balance as at 19/5/10 £4769.40
This includes £153.51 from the Crazy Hair Day held last term that has now been passed on to LAA.
Neil, Kate and Pam signed a letter for the Bank of Scotland to verify that LAA was a fundraising group for the Academy, so as not pay tax on bank interest. When the new bank account was opened earlier this year, the account was mistakenly set up with LAA paying tax on the account’s interest. This will now be changed by the Bank and any tax we have paid so far will be reimbursed to the account.
4. Centenary Club: Clare reported
Bank Balance @ 01/05/10 £522.29.
(-£120 of uncleared cheques)
No. of members = 155
Susan West has still not banked her cheque for £30 from Nov 08 (reissued cheque to replace lost one on 28.1.09) so it was agreed to write this cheque off.
May 2010 Draw: £30 - 355 Kathryn Morrison £20 - 342 Kirstin Robertson £10 - 240 Geraldine Dalgleish £10 - 345 Helen McEwan £10 - 314 Jane Nicholson
5. Parent Council Meeting Feedback: No one from LAA attended the last Parent Council Meeting on 5 May and no report was submitted. The next Parent Council Meeting is to be held on 8 June 2010.
6. Bidding Process: Susan had discussed with David MacKenzie about whether it was appropriate for LAA to buy text books for school. It was felt that this was not appropriate for LAA. The list of bids received by Susan are detailed in a spreadsheet sent out with these minutes, there was discussion over each bid. It was agreed to fund all of the bids, with the following constraints:
Geography – Susan will check with David MacKenzie to see if the Geography Department can get a smart board from a school refurbishment (as the History Department is).
Art & Design - suggested buying 4 cameras instead of 6.
Computing – There was discussion over the version 9 Inspiration Software requested by the Department, as school already has version 7.5. Lauren will check with the Department for clarification of the value of the new version. Since the meeting, the Computing Department have confirmed the benefit and LAA ageed to fund the request.
Year Book Fund – agreed to donate £100 as a one off this year.
Duke of Edinburgh – agreed to fund their bid for this year, as this group is just being set up.
Citizen Week Group – funding was agreed, but note the equipment is required for the week 21 – 25 June.
Music – it was agreed to fund 2 guitars, rather than 3.
Languages – Susan will just check that ‘class reader sets’ are not classed as textbooks, but otherwise the bid was accepted.
Susan agreed to go back to Business Education as they only submitted a bid for £60 to see if there is anything else they require and English as they did not submit a bid. The total spends for the bids will be around £5500.
It was agreed to ask the individual departments to take photographs of their new equipment to use as publicity for LAA
7. Quiz Night on 28th May 2010: Ticket sales currently are just over 40 tickets sold. If you need tickets to sell, please contact Kate for tickets. It was suggested if the ticket sales are not many more, it may be worth having the Quiz in the staff room, rather than the School Hall. Anne will check if the staff room is available that night. (Since reported that it is). We will need to decide by Thursday afternoon, if we want to use the staff room instead, to give the janitor notice for setting up.
Clare will order 60 wine glasses from Sainsbury’s. Neil agreed to pick these up when he is buying the beer and will take the glasses back following the Quiz night.
Lauren reported that 4 6th years will help with the marking of the quiz sheets on the night.
Susan has crisps left over from a previous event to use. Pam will buy the soft drinks and water. Clare will buy the wine and drop off at Kate’s house during next week. It was agreed to buy Red, White and Rose wine. Mike Vickers had distributed a spreadsheet with quantities of beer/wine/soft drinks that was very useful. It was agreed it would be useful to have a price list and items available at the Bar to place on the tables to promote the Bar. Pam will bring the Tombola along for the night and raffle tickets.
Volunteers to help on the night were Neil, Kate, Pam, Sue, Anne, Lauren, Fiona, Susan.
Anne agreed to check with the Janitor what time we could get in after the exams had finished, to set up tables, etc. Anne has now confirmed this will be at 4.30pm. Pam, Sue, Neil, Kate, Lauren, Anne and Fiona (depending on time) volunteered to set up.
Susan will check where the roll of white paper to cover tables is stored.
It was agreed to give a cash prize to the winning team, instead of a voucher, as the value will depend on how many participants we have on the night.
Neil agreed to make up a poster for the event and will put up around Linlithgow and school
8. Any other Business: Anne reported that the urn for heating water may have been allocated for reuse somewhere else within West Lothian. It was agreed that if necessary LAA would buy an urn to use when making tea/coffee for events. Pam offered to check prices on the internet.
It was agreed to have the LAA night out on Friday 25 June at the 4 Mary’s in Linlithgow, as most people could make this night. Pam has now booked the 4 Mary’s for 7.30pm. Please confirm with Pam if you are attending.
Neil had agreed to go ahead and buy the shed from B&Q for approximately £247, as he has measured the space available and it will fit under the stairs.
A request was made for LAA to provide tea/coffee for the Merit Certificates Award night on 2 June 2010, but since the meeting it has been confirmed that we no longer need to provide tea/coffee on that evening.
The Music Department had emailed Susan to thank LAA for providing tea/coffee at the Music Concerts. There was a comment made to see if we could improve the speed of serving. After discussion, it was agreed to try using both ends of the serving area to serve tea/coffee to speed things up.
Alison as she mentioned that as her son leaves school this summer; she will now be retiring from LAA, thanks to Alison as she has been on the committee for many years now.
Kate has filled in the let with school for lets for committee meetings for next year and passed to Anne to hand in to the office
9. Next Meeting: The next meeting will be on Friday 25 June 2010 before the meal at the 4 Marys.
History Elizabeth Knox Laminating pouches - 10 boxes 200 Laminator 60 Half set of additional books for history 200
Geography Elizabeth Knox pH meter / soil meter 60 5 quadrat squares 50 Smartboard 200 1 decible meter 18 Art & Design Department Miss Gander Fuji J210 digital camera 315.96 Art design drying rack 279.96
Learning Support Charles Marr EEE PC lapbook computers 400
Home Economics Terry Rowland Set of DVD's / videos 147 Glow Cream 25 Food temperature thermometers 31.98
Business Education Department Nancy Aikman Logo Board game 59.98
General School David McKenzie Welcome mat for the front door 600
In attendance: Neil Donaldson (Chair), Alison Chambers, Susan Robertson, Kate Haining, Pamela Thomson, Fiona Hendrie, Fiona Wall, Anne Shepherd, Kate Silk, Mike Vickers, Sue Samson, Sandy Woolley, Claire Mason.
Apologies: David MacKenzie, Lauren Morrison.
The Chair opened the meeting by welcoming everyone to the AGM, especially those new to the Committee.
1. Approval of Minutes of Last Meeting: The Minutes of the last AGM held on 25 September were approved. The Minutes were proposed by Mike Vickers and seconded by Alison Chambers.
2. Chairpersons Report:
Neil Donaldson gave the Chairperson’s report as follows:
The past year was a year that some small change was started.
I was pleased to have been asked to be the chairman of LAA, yet had a sense of apprehension as well.
We struggled with some events as we had done in the previous year and stuck with largely tried and tested events. We did however temporarily stop the bingo night.
The quiz night seemed to be successful, however slightly more difficult than the previous year – note to self to make a little more fun if run again!!!
The wine night held last autumn was also a success. Unfortunately the second wine night had to be cancelled due to lack of interest.
We also carried out a number of ‘support’ nights where tea, coffee, biscuits, mulled wine, juice and mince pies were served up to an appreciative audience. I must admit that my favourite of these is the Christmas concert where we do the mulled wine and mince pies.
In April a community event was attended. This was set up in the Academy hall where we made some contacts with other organisations. Thanks to those who set up the stall for this and represented LAA at this event.
As chairperson I have tried to make some small changes over the past year. Some of these are still slowly filtering through the ‘system’ and I hope to see them come to fruition this year.
We do struggle for support as an organisation compared with the support that our counterparts seem to get in the primary schools. What has frustrated me is the ‘marketing’ of LAA. Everyone has worked hard to try to get people along to our events with limited success. I just wish that we could find the right buttons to press to get the parents flooding to our events. In this world of computer technology I think that we should be using this more and more to try to reach people and that is one of my plans i.e. quite simply e-mail every parent that has something to do with the school. I am hoping that by doing this we will be able to reach the parents more effectively.
I hope to try to introduce new ideas more effectively over the coming year with the committees help. I must admit that ideas that I come up with have largely come from other sources and may have been given little cosmetic changes here and there. I would like to continue to try to introduce new things or things that have been successful for other schools or organisations.
OK – enough of what we have done and what I would like to see happening in LAA.
I must finish off by thanking all of the committee members and associates that have helped out during the past year.
The hard work in organising and attending events; in background work such as running the centenary club and keeping our books balanced has been invaluable.
Unfortunately I do not have the exact facts and figures to hand but there is absolutely no doubt that the school has benefited from the efforts of LAA.
We have a challenge to keep this going and also to improve on the current position. I think that the first priority is to get helpers in – but you don’t have to be a committee member to help us out!!
Lastly I am aware that we are losing some of our helpers / committee members.
Anne Shepherd is the liaison between LAA and the parent council. Anne is giving up this role due to commitments at home.
Sandy Woolly’s children have left the school and she is giving up her role as Centenary Club co-ordinator and is sadly leaving the committee.
Kate Haining has been the LAA treasurer for the past 10 years and is giving up this post. 10 years is almost a life sentence! Thanks for the sterling work that has been done over the years.
All of you will be missed in your roles. Once again I would like to thank you all for your support.
3. Financial Report:
Bank Balance at 24.9.09 stands at £3162.23; profit for year was £1410.72. This was less than last year. £4050 (of which £1000 was from the Centenary Club), was given out to the school bid requests in October 2008.
4. Centenary Club Report:
Sandy Woolley reported that at 31st July membership of the Centenary Club stood at 156 – which is 7 less that the same time last year, but 18 more than the previous year. Subs and interest credits came to £1942.34. The Centenary Club gave £1000 to LAA in November to go towads Departmental Bids fund and £850 was given out in prizes.
The draw prize total is £80/month and consists of 5 prizes: one £30 prize, one £20 prize and 3 £10 prizes. To pay out this amount each month we need a membership of at least 160 – so we could do with a few more members.
(At the meeting Sandy had several new applications that had been handed into school).
5. Election of Office Bearers:
HON. PRESIDENT David MacKenzie
CHAIRPERSON Neil Donaldson Proposed A Chambers Seconded F Hendrie
VICE CHAIR Mike Vickers Proposed P Thomson Seconded S Robertson
SECRETARY Kate Silk Proposed P Thomson Seconded N Donaldson
TREASURER Pam Thomson Proposed S Robertson Seconded F Hendrie
CENTENARY Clare Mason Proposed K Silk CLUB Seconded K Haining
STAFF LIASON Susan Robertson Proposed N Donaldson Seconded M Vickers
LAA REP TO Fiona Wall Proposed P Thomson PARENT COUNCIL Seconded S Robertson
6. Hon President’s Address: Neil Donaldson presented a report from David MacKenzie.
The report is included as follows: A key component of a successful school is a close relationship between the establishment and its parent body. This can have a formal footing as with the Parent Forum and Parent Council or through the looser ties that bond the school and its parent association. We are blessed in this school to have a very hard working group on LAA that show their support for the school in so many ways. What is really impressive is that they continue to do this at a time where being part of a body like this is declining right across society. Our social capital (the benefits we get from supporting each other) has been falling since the 1960s and usually shows a faster decline in times of economic hardship so LAA is doing a truly great job in being creative and hard working enough to convince parents that active support of their school is worthwhile and beneficial.
I know last year was difficult with some events being cancelled through lack of support but I would urge the committee to keep up their good work as it would be a great loss to the school if LAA simply became the “centenary club”. Much as financial support is appreciated I still firmly believe that the social contact through quiz nights etc is vital and I will support the committee in anyway possible.
I wish you well for the year ahead.
AGM was now brought to a close by Chair and a general committee meeting was held.
