CCHS OLD GIRLS’/ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION
MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, SATURDAY, 8th JULY, 20176, at 11:00 am
PRESENT - 19 members
1. APOLOGIES
Jenny Crewdson, Jenny Pennick, Marsyl Knott, Dianne Couch, Jean Hamblin, Joan Watson, Jenny Dennis,
Louise Armstrong, Ann Heathfield, Margaret Collin
2. Minutes of the Last Meeting (16th July 2016 at CCHS)
These had previously been distributed to members, were approved by those present and signed by the Chair, Liz White.
3. Matters Arising - None.
4. Secretary’s Report
Despite a surfeit of domestic challenges, your OGA Committee members have survived another year. If we have been a tad distrait, we apologise. Life has not been easy but onwards and upwards!
Liz has produced two excellent Newsletters during the year. Unfortunately, there have been delays in the circulation of these Newsletters which left little notice for some of our events. This was a situation beyond our control. We discovered that Mrs Marshall, the Head Teacher, wanted to read and approve the Newsletters before they went onto the School website and were sent to Reprographics for printing. She is obviously extremely busy and, understandably, our Newsletters are not one of her priorities. We realised that we should lift this unnecessary burden from her and get ourselves firmly into the 21st century!
Tina was tasked with setting up a basic website for the OGA, which we were going to show you before we started to use it. However, we realised that the Spring Newsletter was going to be horrendously late if we waited any longer for the School to send it out so Tina bit the bullet and distributed it on our fledgling site. Those who receive their Newsletters by post had theirs printed by a local company who did a very good, and cheap, job for us. We hope you approve of our decisions. The creating of our own website is an excellent idea in many other respects. It will give us the opportunity to add photos, archive material, reunion
information etc. etc. Piggybacking on the School website had its downside because we were very limited with what we could add AND many people found it hard to find the OGA section anyway.
Speaking of reunions, I had a wonderful time earlier this year helping a couple of Old Girls from the school year below me arrange a reunion at remarkably short notice. Access to relevant school magazines and genealogy sites, coupled with a lot of experience with genealogical research certainly paid off and I found a lot of their friends. They invited me to join them for their event, which was held at Greyfriars. It was a delightful afternoon. I am currently arranging a reunion for my year. We will be here in October. I am sure Jean will report on our situation with the bank which left us in a state of what can only be described as hysterical despair. I won’t steal her thunder but the matter does warrant a mention in the annual report. How she kept her sense of humour, I have no idea.
We have had some really enjoyable events during the year. The annual garden party and a coffee morning at Liz’s house, a coffee morning at Greyfriars with tours for those who missed out at the 2015 AGM, lunch at the Colchester Institute and lunch at the Bamboo House too. Our thanks go to Jean for all the organising and to Liz and her husband, Alan, and, of course, to Di, for their hospitality and gorgeous food.
For those wondering about the Head Teachers’ board, it is on its way. The order is now in because we finally gained access to the Teachers’ Registration Council Registers which give the qualifications of the pre-1980’s Heads. To explain, most of the school records prior to the 1980’s were destroyed, so we were very unsure of our facts. We might still have to be a little vague on dates but we have a pretty good idea. I am much happier!
Liz gave her usual talk to the Leaving Girls in the late spring.
The Committee has met during the year to discuss matters like the website and, of course, events. As usual, meetings have been great fun, often descending into howls of mirth. I would encourage some of you to join us – she says, hopefully. Mary does an amazing job, I simply do not know how she manages to produce such sensible, coherent, minutes. Thanks are due to the entire Committee. I was quite serious when I said they have all had problems and yet they have all ploughed on regardless. Impressive!
And that’s about it for this year, you will be relieved to know. Short and sweet! I shall now hand over to Jean who can tell you more about our experiences with the bank. Oh my word!
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Matters arising from the Secretary’s Report - None.
5. Treasurer’s Report
When I began to prepare these accounts I realised that my brilliant idea of arranging a whole year’s events at the beginning of the year had made the accounts far more complicated than usual. If you look you will see that I have had to put entries for Lunches, Coffee Mornings and other events twice. With events such as the Chinese Lunches and Lunch at Colchester Institute the income matched the expenditure. Thanks to Liz’s kind hospitality at her home we made a profit on the Garden Party of last August and the Coffee Morning in March this year. We made a very small loss with the Greyfriars’ Coffee Morning in 2016, but that was because as the venue is so popular we left a tip as a goodwill gesture to ensure that we could go back again.
The Committee decided that to take the pressure off the School at a very busy time in the term we would have the few newsletters we need printed privately. We were pleased with the result and the promptness of the printing and will probably use this local company again.
I was extremely surprised to receive a very low quote from our Insurance Brokers to renew the insurance we take out annually for the Association. Last year it was £220.01 and this year it cost £118.80. Some of the Committee have looked through the paperwork carefully and the Brokers assure us that we have the same cover as before, but they managed to take out our policy with a different company, hence the difference in price.
Thank you to everyone who provided an email address to help keep costs down. You will see that we have spent over £120 on postage, but some of this was for the purchase of stamps before the April price rise.
Jo mentioned in her report that we have had a few problems with Barclay’s Bank during the year. The word few should be in inverted commas. To summarise, now I have calmed down a little, we wished to change and add to the signatories on our accounts. I had endless visits to the Bank and telephone calls, and eventually in their wisdom they took my name off the account entirely. I was incandescent because I have been Treasurer of this Association for a very long time. I asked Jo to ring and although she had a certain amount of information she didn’t have a copy of the current statement, so she was declared persona non grata as well. We then had a letter acknowledging that we had appointed Liz as signatory and the letter confirmed that our cheques should now be signed by two of the above signatories, listing only Liz. Jo and I had to take time to visit the Bank together and after an hour our names were reinstated. I am still awaiting a letter confirming all three names. If it wasn’t for the fact that Barclay’s Prettygate is my nearest Bank our accounts would have been moved by now! At present we have £3877.27 in the Barclay’s Business Saver account and £351.87 in the Community account. This latter current account includes money deposited in advance for forthcoming events.
Matters arising from the Treasurer’s Report - None
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6. Website
As Jo has already mentioned, Tina has very kindly been working on a new website just for the Association. She had hoped to provide a demonstration at the meeting, unfortunately we were unable to access the school’s Wi-Fi or our personal data providers on the day. The site is still in its infancy, but Association members were encouraged to access the site post-meeting and to make any suggestions and comments to the Committee.
Web address of the new website: https://cchsoga5.wixsite.com/mysite-1
The site already includes such things as: access to a printable copy of the newsletter (and will also include an archive of past newsletters); an events section which will be regularly updated; copies of the various versions of the school badge that have been in existence over the School’s history; images of the School at Greyfriars from historic postcards provided by Jo; an email link to the Association. It is proposed that other sections will be added, including memories of the way school life used to be! Further suggestions for additional sections which could be added to the website were discussed at the meeting. These included: photographs of the Committee; photographs of events, including the AGM; photographs of the current school, for example, taken during Jo’s proposed reunion in October (which may require permission from the Head Teacher). Another suggestion was that we could provide a link to the Heritage Open Days (7-10
September 2017) on our website, as this includes tours of Greyfriars.
Link to the Heritage website: https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/visiting
All present thanked Tina for her efforts and skills in getting the site up and running and for agreeing to keep it up-to-date for us. All agreed it will be a good resource for members. We will ask the School if they would provide a link to our new website on their existing site.
7. Motions - None.
8. Election of Officers
Due to ill health, Louise Armstrong has decided to stand down from the Committee for the current year. The Committee and Association members thank Louise for her contributions to our Committee meetings over the last year. The remaining members have confirmed that they would be willing to stand again this year. Liz White asked if there were any new nominations or volunteers: none were offered at the meeting. The committee were overwhelmingly agreed by a show of hands as:
President - Marsyl Knott
Chair - Elizabeth White
Secretary - Josephine Edwards
Treasurer - Jean Johnson
Committee members:
Tina Powell (Website and Information Technology)
Mary Rickard (Minutes and School Leaving Scholarship Fund)
Charlotte Anderson (Remote member!)
Additional volunteers, especially younger members, will still be welcome. Please contact any existing Committee member if you are interested.
9. Any Other Business
Old Girls’ School Leaving Scholarship Fund: Mary confirmed that as of 8/6/17, the Fund stands at £1043.52. The School made a single nomination for the recipient this year – Esther Greene, who has been offered a place at Newnham College, Cambridge, despite having to overcome some serious health issues. Liz presented the award for Esther at this year’s Leaving Assembly and advised that there had been an article in the newspapers about Esther. Please see this article from the Colchester Gazette.
Those present asked Liz if she could tell us something of what happened at the School Leaving Award ceremony. Liz advised that she did not prepare a speech for the assembly, but tried to reflect what had gone before. It was lovely to see the current students. A suggestion was made that it might be beneficial to the School for a member of the Association to accompany Liz when she attends the next ceremony, as there are so many Old Girls who could be a fantastic resource of experience, knowledge, potential contacts and the like for the current students. Liz will explore this idea further with the School.
A collection for the School Leaving Scholarship Fund was taken during the meeting. A total of £33.50 was collected: this figure will appear in next year’s statement.
Date of the Next Meeting - To be decided and confirmed.
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There then followed a delicious lunch and our thanks go to Liz White and Di Childs for all of their hard work in preparing this.
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