PLANS to replace seven high schools with five academies, and reorganise special needs education, have moved a step closer after closure notices were published.

Families now have six weeks to submit their comments before Stoke-on-Trent City Council makes its final decision.

The latest round of consultation comes as worried residents have called a public meeting for tonight to urge a rethink over the location for one of the new academies.

They say the proposed site off Dividy Road, Park Hall, would create traffic chaos and force pupils to travel along dangerous roads.

They also fear it would destroy several pools which are a haven for wildlife, disturb a nearby nature reserve, and ruin a golf course.

The city council has said it is willing to consider an alternative spot, as long as it is within a few hundred metres and meets the approval of academy sponsor, Stoke-on-Trent College.

Now Willfield Village Forum, which has organised the meeting at Bentilee Neighbourhood Centre at 7.30pm, is urging residents to go along and voice their ideas.

The Park Hall academy would replace Edensor Technology College, in Longton, and Mitchell Business and Enterprise College, in Bucknall, and open in September 2011. It would initially operate from the two existing sites, with pupils and staff transferring to the new building in 2013.

Willfield Village Forum member Margaret Lowe lives in Waverton Road, near the planned school site.

She said: "I'm hoping we are going to reach some sort of consensus at the meeting, so we can go back to the council with an alternative site.

"I would also like Ged Rowney (director of children and young people's services) to come to look at the Park Hall site to see what the council is going to destroy. The area is teeming with wildlife."

The public meeting will also include speeches by city councillor Barry Stockley and Terry Crowe, chairman of governors at Berry Hill High, below from right in support of an alternative site.

Berry Hill's future is tied in with another part of the city's £250 million Building Schools for the Future programme.

Both it and St Peter's High, Penkhull, are due to close to make way for a church-sponsored academy in autumn 2011. It would initially be a split-site academy, before a new building is ready at Fenton Manor.

The other proposals, outlined in the closure notices published yesterday, include:

Replacing Blurton High with an academy in September 2010.

Turning James Brindley Science College, in Chell, into an academy in autumn 2011.

Replacing Brownhills Maths and Computing College, in Tunstall, with an academy in September 2010.

There are currently five special schools in Stoke-on-Trent and the reorganisation plans include closing Heathfield School, in Chell Heath, in autumn 2010 as part of merger with Chell's Middlehurst School. Pupils would eventually transfer to a revamped building at Middlehurst.

Heathfield parents have been fighting the closure, saying it will unsettle their children.

They are also worried that youngsters with severe learning difficulties will be educated alongside pupils with challenging behaviour.