Split-level School's Anger

Samantha Levine
10/9/09
Current Event Seven

On Friday, October 9th, 2009 in The Independent, based in London, UK, Katherine Donnelly wrote the article School split between two sites waiting 11 years for extension. This article is about the fight for better accommodations for schools. “The 220 pupils at Scoil Bhride, Rathdowney, Co Laois, are split between two buildings at either end of the midlands town.” Parents and staff have to work between two different buildings for the same school, and they are not close together (in fact they are across town from one another). Eleven years ago the school system announced that the school needed to be updated so this madness could be stopped. The school put in a request for it to be expanded.
It was said that “since the two schools amalgamated, with an extended building on the larger site promised to accommodate all pupils in a modern setting”. In 2006 the dream of bettering the school buildings was made possible by making it onto the Department of Education’s building programme. However, finances began to tighten with lack of money so the school building programme was not doing as much construction as planned. In response to the lack of finances, neither construction nor initiative as to what the current state of the project is in. Mr. Gunnell, the principal of the school feels this situation is very frustrating.
He also states that the “great value" that Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe spoke about in relation to building tenders in the current climate may be well gone by the time Scoil Bhride was allowed to progress to tender and construction”. Many people want to know when the construction will begin. Staff and parents are disgusted with the commute that some parents have to do three times, “to the secondary school, to the senior school, and then to the junior school”. As well as, the building is falling apart, such as the plaster is peeling off the walls, and the boilers are old and need replacement.


http://www.independent.ie/education/latest-news/school-split-between-two-sites-waiting-11-years-for-extension-1909048.html