'The pipes used to freeze and we had to carry in basins of water to wash our hands' - Laois special school
Staff of Kolbe Special School in Portlaoise share their joy and memories as they settle into new building
The Laois school for children with severe to profound disabilities or autism, has finally moved into its beautiful new home, 26 years after a new building was first recommended.
Kolbe Special School in Portlaoise has 48 pupils from not just Laois but surrounding counties, with specialist staff giving them both medical and educational care.
On Monday, April 20 the children came through the doors of the new €15 million school for their first day.
It is just down the Block Road on a site given by the HSE, but it is a planet away from their old, cramped poorly insulated school, where a tiny steel garden shed had served as a makeshift sensory room.
Orlagh Mahon, principal of Kolbe Special School. Photo: Leinster Express
“It was lovely to see their reactions. One child came in with a smile and just kept saying ‘new school, new school’ and just kept smiling ear to ear. He is still walking around just to see everything.
"It’s great to the smiles on their faces. They are adjusting a lot faster that we would have thought, for children that don’t like transitioning,” she noted.
The new building is markedly calm. The many sensory and soft play rooms offer children a space to regulate when overwhelmed, without other pupils being upset by the noise.
The PE hall in the new Kolbe Special School building. Photos: Leinster Express
"We were emotional leaving the old school. A lot of us were there for a long time. But are we sorry to have left it? No. It served its purpose, we were happy in it, but when you see the facilities here now there is absolutely no comparison,” the principal said.
The school has brightly painted wide corridors and Ms Mahon jokes the only thing she needs now are roller skates.
"The corridors are good and wide for children who are learning to walk, using walking aids, they now have proper safe space to be able to get out and move around,” she said.
It has secure outdoor soft play sensory gardens. Two spacious wings each have four classrooms with huge ensuites with hoists and changing beds for children in wheelchairs.
It also has a big bright PE hall, a lovely library, and a home economics kitchen where the kids have lots of space to cook and bake.
A soft play room is furnished thanks to a €100,000 donation from the Hollybrook residential development. Much of the other equipment in the school is also funded by local donations.
A ‘daily living skills’ room is laid out like an apartment so students learn how to live as independently as possible.
There are clinician’s rooms for medical appointments, a proper staffroom, and an Occupational Therapy room.
The Department funded new floorcleaning machines, and lots of storerooms for the children’s equipment so they no longer pose trip hazards in corridors.
The school cost the state about €15 million, the principal said.
"It’s a huge investment. One of the biggest things new to us is the hoists. In the old school we have four mobile hoists, here we have 22 overhead tracking hoists. So the facilities now meet the needs of all the pupils.”
The pupils come from as far as Offaly, Kildare and Carlow. Despite the new building, there is no extra capacity for more than the 48 they have.
"We’re quite happy the way we are. They built it for what we have and haven’t left us provision, as far as we are aware, for expansion. This year anyway we are full, with a waiting list,” the principal said.
It has been a long wait, and a battle by the school staff, parents and local community including Laois TDs who spent years requesting the replacement building from successive ministers.
Kolbe is the last of all 11 of Portlaoise's schools to get a new building, despite its vulnerable pupils needing the best one possible for their health.
In 2018, Ms Mahon told the Leinster Express the building was "totally inadequate" for what was then only 30 pupils.
Brother Matthew Hayes, once the principal of the Patrician College in Ballyfin demesne, chairs the board of directors at Kolbe Special School.
Brother Matthew with the two school nurses in the new clinicians rooms.
"At long last we have gotten what the children deserve. I’m very thankful to all the staff here, for all the work they do, and have done. Hopefully now the fruits of their labour will become more evident, more quickly.
"The fundraisers were huge, like the stand at the ploughing championships for two years, which brought in well over €100,000,” he said.
He believes the long delay, 26 years since a new building was first recommended, is down to political pressure in other counties that pushed Kolbe down the list.
"The political world interferes with the building of schools, it shouldnt be allowed. Five years ago when Kolbe wasn’t included in the building plan, only for staff here demanded to go public, it wouldn’t have been included.
"The department are now forcing schools to open special needs classrooms, but there’s no training for staff. The amount of knowledge and experience in mainstream schools is very limited compared to here.
"There’s a few pupils here who were in mainstream and they’ve lost out ferociously I think. The department was pushing integration as they call it, but I know from experience it’s not in the best interest of some children,” Br Matthew said.
Despite the investment, they are concerned for ongoing funding of the two school nurses.
The nurses are funded by the school patron, the Muiriosa Foundation, not by the Department of Education.
“Even though the department knows nurses are needed in special schools, we need a guarantee that they will be paid by the department, not left to the good will of the patron body, which we are praying will continue. Some special schools now have no nurses,” Br Matthew said.
Tina Conroy is one of the nurses who has moved from a cramped cold prefab.
“It’s more spacious, more airy and more private now for the children to have their medical needs taken care of.
"I’m forgetting how bad things were. We actually had a thermometer in the room, the pipes used to freeze and we had to carry in basins of water to wash our hands. The basics weren’t there, now we have the right things in place. The children really deserve this, after all they’ve been through, it makes such a difference in their lives. For their families too, knowing they have this building to look forward to every day, it is lovely,” the nurse said.
The school shares its Occupational therapist, Physiotherapist, Speech and Language therapist and a psychologist with St Francis School and a special school in Offaly, paid by the Child Development Network Team.
"We are one of the schools promised an in-school speech and language therapist and OT, they are supposed to be starting in September, funded by the Department of Education and NCSE,” Ms Mahon said.
Teacher Therese Kennedy blowing bubbles for her senior pupils.
"Santy always came but yes, we will be able to do more. We are already setting up a plan for TY students from St Mary’s CBS to come here over the course of next year and do PE, storytelling, whatever the case might be.
"We have Raucous Circus coming the first week in June for a week. Each class will get to go to the circus, here in the school.”
"Now that it’s finished, I’ve decided that I can never move house, it’s the hardest thing we have ever done. Was it exhausting? Yes it was. Was it worth it? Most definitely,” the principal said.
She thanked the parents over the last decades for their campaign.
"From the very beginning, thank you to all of the parents who have fought to see it. The input they had over the years supporting us. But it’s not just the parents and past parents. It’s been the people of Laois. The community of Portlaoise, everybody has been behind us. For that we are thankful,” she said.
The keys were handed over at the start of the Easter holidays, a last minute surprise.
"We had movers in over Easter, I didn’t get my Easter holidays, but I don’t care. It was so worth it to be here.”
The Principal shares her hopes for her pupils.
“That they are happy, that everyone of them can achieve to the best of their abilities. That is our hope and dream for them.”
The new school will receive a blessing by Bishop Denis Nulty, on June 12.