Woodlands Meed Campaigners Launch Petition To Ensure WSCC Retain Land Earmarked For The School's Expansion

Campaigners have set up a petition calling for West Sussex County Council to ensure they retain the land earmarked for Woodlands Meed's proposed expansion.

As it stands, the local authority will be signing over the land to the Academy Trust who are to take over the running of Oakmeeds Community College.

This would mean that some children with special educational needs will have to leave Woodlands Meed at the age of 14 as the current college site - located elsewhere in the town - does not meet the needs of all the students. A pupose-built college wing at the new Woodlands Meed site was going to address this, but is now severely in doubt.



Sign The Petition
The petition is titled 'West Sussex County Council, do not treat our special needs school as the poor relation!' and can be signed on the change.org website here

The petition is currently just shy of 500 signatures at the time of writing this news story. West Sussex County Council require petitions to gain at least 500 signatures for a council officer to give evidence at a public meeting of the relevant select committee.

If 3,000 signatures can be collected, then the petition will be debated by the full council at West Sussex. The relevant cabinet member will have to address the petition, followed by a debate lasting up to 30 muinutes where any member of the council can speak.

You can read about how WSCC handle petitions here

Video
BBC South East Today produced a video piece about the current issue between Woodslands Meed and the County Council. We grabbed it from the BBC site before it disappeared. It's racked up over 22k views via our Facebook page so far....

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