Pupils from the Ballinteer Educate Together School outside the Dail in May
You may recall pupils from the Ballinteer Educate Together School protesting outside the Dáil in May.
The school has been housed in temporary accommodation since 2012 with no word on a permanent building in sight.
Further to this…
The school has written the following open letter to Minister for Education Richard Bruton:
Day 100 – Nothing funny today, Richard Bruton TD, just sadness and disappointment that 100 days after the children of Ballinteer Educate Together proudly marched on the Dáil to ask you where their long promised school is, after months and years of letters and emails, and even cheery postcards from their holidays, we are still no closer to an answer from you and the Department of Education and Skills as to the status of our long promised new building.
After five years we are grateful to have left the overcrowded prefabs at St Tiernan’s and are thankful to them for their patience in accommodating us.
Our principal, teachers, staff and parents, in hand with the Department, have done a wonderful job preparing Notre Dame for our children.
But it is not out our school.
It does not serve the catchment area it was promised to. Some families have found the logistics impossible and children have left, classes have been disrupted and as resilient as our school community is, we are bruised.
With such continued silence it seems implausible our school will be ready by September 2019, so where will you put us then?
Our school will be almost eight years old at that stage, and when it should be a flourishing and vital part of the greater Ballinteer area, it will remain rootless.
All we can do is ask you again to please come and meet us and help us understand what can be done to progress this situation. We all want the same thing, a beautiful and thriving school to help serve the community of Dublin 16.
Let’s work together and let’s #BuildBallinteerETNS
The parents of Ballinteer Educate Together.
Previously: If The Kids Are United
Thanks Dudley Colley
