We Are a Green School
As we make progress towards enhancing the grounds of our fabulous new building, we have had trees and beech hedging planted. We have four apple trees and two pear trees also, to attract bees and butterflies. These were given to us from DCs for Bees Orchards in the Community Project. Hopefully before long we will be feasting on delicious home-grown fruit. Each class planted daffodils and window boxes last year in the prefabs and these are dotted about the school in spring to bring some colour.
Cathriona Kenneally joined our little staff team in 1997 and brought with her a certain spark and sense of fun. She was a popular and dedicated member of staff and the children loved her. She tragically died before her time in 2005 and we remember her in our garden with this memorial bench.
The Millennium Oak was planted in the early summer of the year 2000 to mark the special year. A poem was read by a pupil and a planting ceremony was held with all the pupils and staff present. It continues to grow well in a central position of our garden.
As part of our last Erasmus project, we teamed up with a number of other European partner schools to work on the theme ‘Past Generations/New Innovations’. Part of the project was to make a time capsule. This was buried in 2018 to be opened in 2038 or later. It is located in front of the memorial bench.
We are a Green School and have a recycling policy in action. Every class recycles paper, cardboard and plastic. Children are encouraged to reuse lunch and drink containers. We reuse containers like milk and yogurt containers and coffee cups for planting seeds. We collect batteries for recycling and help raise funds for Barrettstown. We have four green flags achieved to date: Litter and Waste, Energy, Water and Travel and Transport. We are currently working towards the Biodiversity flag (which has been stalled temporarily due to the pandemic and building on our site). Our new school has a rainwater harvesting system installed to be less demanding on the water network.
