| |
No one was listening until issue became ‘political’
• I WAS appalled at the attacks on Councillor Alexis Rowell (Letters, July 23).
I am not a Liberal Democrat voter but I respect someone who stands for what he believes in and fought so much for Camden’s forgotten reception-age children.
I am the parent of an unplaced child and my son, like many others, was forgotten in Camden’s primary school entry forecast and left without a school for September.
I have been going to all the working group meetings and I am the person setting up the Camden Courthope Education Centre PTA so I would consider myself to be very involved regarding the issue of the unplaced children.
Since May 6 I have met Councillor Andrew Mennear twice. Somehow it does not seem logical to him as the executive member for education to attend the working group meetings on a regular basis. Cllr Rowell has been there since day one. I agree with him that the group could have worked better. Camden has a tendency to talk at people rather than with them which can still be felt in the set-up of the centre.
Cllr Mennear has not responded to any communication I have sent him. He seems to think that ignoring the issue and putting his head in the sand will make us, the parents, disappear and he seems only to be prepared to talk to parents through the letters pages of newspapers, which is not constructive.
I can say with confidence that the parent group has done more than Cllr Mennear to solve the problem and Cllr Rowell is among the people who found a solution. The executive member for education was not.
By refusing to interact with the parents properly like an adult by talking directly to us, Cllr Mennear chose to revert to playground tactics and communicate using the letters pages so that he did not have to explain his department’s inadequate handling of the situation to the people who got let down. And what if Cllr Rowell politicised the issue… the fact is, we need a new school in Belsize Park and no one was listening to us until it became political. The end justifies the means. It is easy for those who did very little to complain about the work others did.
LEILA ROY,
Gospel Oak
|
 |
|
|
|
| |
| |
