Mid-Louth: Sod turned on new Ardee Educate Together site

A new era for Ardee Educate Together began in earnest yesterday as the sod was finally turned on the site of their new state of the art building.

It’s been a long wait for the school which first received approval for a new building fourteen years ago with a completion date of September 2014.

After a number of false starts work was due to begin the day after the St Patrick’s Bank Holiday Weekend this year but was again put on hold due to a funding shortfall at the Department of Education.

However, June saw Louth County Council appoint a contractor for the €7.6 million new school building with work due to begin this coming Monday and it is hoped work will be completed by Christmas 2024.

The agreement for delivery of eight classrooms and special needs units was also amended to include the four special needs classrooms, and all associated administrative and ancillary accommodation.

It was a happy day for pupils, parents and staff, none more so than School principal Anne Middleton has been there since the project was first approved:

“The school started in 2002 and I came here in 2005 and there were 40 children and two teachers then.

“When we were supposed to get the school first we had one hundred children but now we have 212.

“Originally, they were going to build a single story and then they thought maybe a two story would be more efficient …and then it turned out it wasn’t more efficient.

“Then we doubled our autism rooms. They were building us an eight class school and hall and library and two autism rooms but now we’ve got four.

“It was originally going to be a big long line in one linear piece but now it’s going to be in the shape of a cross with four autism rooms.

“We’re going to get eight classes because we have eight class teachers, we’ve got three support teachers and two English as a foreign language teachers so that’s five support teachers and four special classes for autism.”

When built, the autism classes will be bigger than the normal class rooms and each will have a sensory room which Ms Middleton says will feed into the schools big emphasis on inclusion:

“We’d be very inclusive [school], we’re an Educate together so we’re multicultural, we’re multi denominational and we’re for all abilities.”

Currently, the school is split in two with buildings and prefabs on either side of the Dundalk Road, although less than ideal Ms Middleton says students and teachers alike have coped manfully:

“We have a fabulous staff along with fabulous children because the conditions that they have worked in haven’t been easy to be split across two sides of a road is not easy.”