Almost 500 people have signed a petition in a matter of days in a bid to save Aberfoyle Nursery from suggested budget cuts.
Parents and campaigners say cutting hours at the rural nursery will impact upon their ability to work, see the loss of a member of nursery staff and could even ultimately lead to the complete loss of the facility.
The plans are among a raft of ideas floated by Stirling Council officials in a bid to plug a £13million funding gap.
Under their suggestions for Aberfoyle Nursery, petitioners say the service would be reduced from 8-6pm to 9-3pm Monday to Friday.
Parents would no longer be able to pay for extra hours/days beyond their government funded nursery hours and the service will probably only be provided during term time, 38 weeks, instead of 45.6 weeks per year currently.
They also say the nursery would probably lose at least one member of staff.
The petitioners, who as the Observer went to press had reached 442 signatures, said: “Aberfoyle Nursery is a wonderful and well loved nursery used by parents from not only Aberfoyle, but Kinlochard, Inversnaid, Gartmore, and Port of Menteith to name a few.
“The current hours and facilities the nursery offers is a big factor for new families moving to the local area.
“Many of the staff live in the local area and are part of our community.
“These changes will have a ripple effect across our wider community.
“Capacity at the nursery has already been permanently cut from 32 to 24 children. We cannot allow more and more changes to be made, eventually we will end up with no nursery.
“This is the second time they have tried to make these cuts, the first time with our protests the changes were reversed (2023).
“We did it before, hopefully we can do it again!”
As well as slashing the music service, cuts to school counselling, reducing support staff, axing out-of-school care, cutting library opening times, removing the garden waste concession, slashing funding to Stirling Community Enterprise and Stirling Citizen’s Advice Bureau and increases to charges for cemetery and burial services have also been suggested.
Councillors will have the final say on budget plans but depute council leader, Cllr Gerry McGarvey, has warned that, with the authority facing a £12.938m budget gap in 2025-26 alone, some “tough choices” still need to be made.
A Stirling Council spokesperson said: “The council faces an estimated budget shortfall of £13 million next year where a number of difficult decisions will need to be made.
“Elected members will make a final decision on what proposed savings should be taken forward at this year’s budget setting meeting this month following an extensive public consultation, which saw over 4,300 people take part in two surveys.”
In 2023 the council made a budget U-turn on controversial cuts to local nursery opening hours at Fintry and Aberfoyle.
The measures had been agreed as part of Stirling Council’s 2023/24 budget, with the minority Labour administration blaming extreme budget pressures and Scottish Government ringfencing on having to focus on only statutory obligations.
But this, and a host of other unpopular budget cuts, were later reversed after councillors agreed to reallocate £392,000 that was to have been given to Sistema Scotland, who deliver Raploch and Fallin Big Noise programmes.
This followed an announcement by the Scottish Government that it would provide £1.5m of funding to Sistema to deliver the Big Noise projects in 2023/24.
The petition can be found and signed by visiting: https://www.change.org/p/save-aberfoyle-nursery.