Anybody else chair of a Pre School Committee?

[handlemecarefully]

Want to start a support group for letting of steam and general moaning??

..and sharing advice?

LizP, where do you hold your Ball?

We hold 5 or 6 sessiomnsa weeek for 3 yr olds, and 2 or 3 for 2 yr olds, depending on numbers.

We charge £6 a session for 2's, £7 fpor 3's, though mots are funded.

We can have 18 3 yrolds per session, and 12 2 yr olds.

hallowe'en fete next weekend, with 70 children

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try Awrds for all.

Or a local business. we've received quite a bit from local things.

Orinoco do you pay for the snack? Here kids bring a piece of fruit for each session they attend. The parent helper takes the lot, chops it up and the kids sit down to a plate of mixed fruit to share. Kids get water or milk to drink and bring their own water bottle for drinks other than snack time.

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I've been looking at insurance (your other thread gave me the willies FMF!).
We have insurance though the PLA with Royal sun alliance (cover level 2). However i looked at the policy and it makes no mention of cover should your playgroup be folding/redundancy payments . I phoned them up this morning and the guy on the phone confirmed that no such cover exists and that basically the committee members would be liable.
He said that this may all change in a few months when playgroups will be able to become CIO's (charitable incorporated organisations) where you would be insulated from financial liability.
Does anyone else know anymore about this? and when the legislation comes into force?

No - but I hope to find out!

We hold the ball in a marquee in the gardens of a fabulous house in the village. The owners very kindly let us do this every year, dispite it being a weeeks worth of disruption for them.

Wow - that's generous!

But it still costs £18k to put on? Have I got that right?

Am not the chair, but am the H&S rep, as I happened to mention what I do for a living.
Said I would think about it, then found my name was down and other parents were just aked to sign against any names whether they new who they signing for or not.

Have had so much stuff from the pre-school and have not managed to do half of it. Feel like I am letting them down. Am just about 8months PG and work 5 hours a day - it's all getting too much. But feel if I resign DC will get persecuted, as noticed a marked change in some of the play leaders attitudes towards her once I was voted in - any suggestions?

redshoes - yep thats right still costs about £18,000 to put on. About £30 per head goes on catering - including waiting staff and the other £9000 goes on marquee and toilet hire, the band, decorations, hire of tables/chairs etc. It is scary how much it costs really, but it has been going for 10 years and has built up over the years. Imagine the first ones cost less, but only had about 100 people.

The owners are very kind - they definately go over and above what you might expect. Also these people moved in a few years ago and were just told a ball was already in progress for that summer and would they mind if we carried on.

Vanilla milkshake before I took on this role I had no idea about the massive role that health and safety played in committee meetings (I guess about a third of each meeting is spent on it here). I think as a committee (and staff) we need to be realistic about what a volunteer can do, our h and s rep also works in the field and has a job 3.5 days a week. She is super efficient but she has set targets and a time scale to get them completed in, maybe you could do that in your group? Don't like the sound of the way your child is treated having changed, it should make no difference. Let me know what sort of things you are being expected to do and I may be able to let you know what has been done here.

Thanks Geog,

So far I have'nt been asked to do anything I did'nt expect for H&S. It's all the other committee related stuff that I am included on. I am happy to use my expertiese when it comes the role I've been appointed. But in terms of organising fund raisers and social nights out etc I dont feel I have the time or at the moment the energy to particiapte. I sound great dont I? If I was'nt heavily PG it might be another matter - but they knew I was PG when they volounteered me.

What else that annoyed me was I took in some things for the children to use for crafts and when I told the chair she said oh they'll be great for 'x' event. Which would give the children no benfit at all as it was'nt a fund raising event.

LizP - wow. But great that it's so successful, and you make so much money - would be afraid to try it though in case it went pear-shaped and it bankrupt us.
Geogteach/Vanilla - getting panicky re H & S now...never given it much thought! What should I be looking at?

The previous H&S rep in our committee used an office/workplace H&S checklist which I thought was totally unsuitable for a pre-school. I re-worked the checklist looking at things like
sockets in childrens reach
broken toys
furniture
supervision of play equipment
access to potentiall dangerous area - such as the kitchen/store room
Storage of items above toddler head height which they could pull down on them selves.
Also looked at environmetal issues, space, heat, light etc.
And the usual fire and first aid.

Fire is a biggy at the moment as new legislation came in earlier this month. Fire brigades nolonger check premises it is your responsibility, we have had to appoint and train a fire marshall from amongst the staff. The other never ending issue is toys for under 3's. If you have under 3's in theory they shouldn't have access to toys marked only for those over 36months (which includes virtually everything). We have changed to a system where under 3's are only admitted to 2 of our sessions which allows staff to be more aware of who has access to what.

I think the PLA do a H & S check sheet that might help if you have nothing sorted out. We had someone come round from H&S last week and they seemed more interested in the paperwork (like that we should re-sign our policies every year even if we don't change them) rather than pointing out potential problems.

Thanks y'all - will bring all this up at our next meeting and get someone on to it.

Ok what sort of things would you want to consider if you got a new build. I was caught out yesterday when the parish priest needed me to make a snap decision about plans for our new accomodation(part of a larger parish building project). I've given up dedicated outdoor play space (although we will still have access to other land in the grounds) in favour of dedicated indoor space (the previous plan involved other hall users having access to preschool when we weren't using it).
I feel excited at the prospect of something new but petrified of landing the pre school with the wrong thing if you know what I mean!

try and keep the cloakrooms reasonably open plan to avoid bottlenecks

Do you think it is unreasonable to ask parents to make a voluntary donation to the preschool in lieu of a load of fund raising.I know dd's senior school do this and it's very successful.
I think we would only ask the parents of children who are over 3 as they don't pay a fee for nursery.

Haven't got a clue how much to suggest,anything from £10 and up but hopefully more like 20-30.Am I being unreasonable?
Bearing in mind most of the fundraising such as raffles/sponsored stuff would be paid for by the parents anyway.

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Ggirl we have a voluntary fund. Started in times of particular hardship but have just decided to keep it going even though we are now not so scint, it is supposed to cover luxuries like when we have a magician in for St joseph's day (the name of the pre school). We still have fund raising too.