This is an important channel which the school is using to keep students and parents informed of all news, updates and events.  

Parents & Students are advised to download the App to ensure they have the most up to date information as published by the school.

If you are having any issues while downloading the App, please contact Unique Schools directly through support@uniqueschools.ie

Please note, if you have a child in another school that is also using a Unique Schools App you do not need to register an account with our App, you should simply login using your existing login details for the other schools App.

This is an important channel which the school is using to keep students and parents informed of all news, updates and events.  Parents & Students are advised to download the App to ensure they have the most up to date information as published by the school.  

If you are having any issues while downloading the App, please contact Unique Schools directly through support@uniqueschools.ie

Dear parents/guardians, 

all after school clubs are cancelled this afternoon due to Staff Meeting.

Kind regards, 

School Office

Dear parents/guardians, 

We are organising a bake sale to raise funds for the school musical. The suggested donation is €2 and students are encouraged to dress up as 80's characters. 

You can drop the cakes on Friday from 8.15 in the Science Lab.

Please label boxes clearly and don't forget to mention if the cakes contain any allergens (e.g. nuts).

Kind regards, School Office

Dear parents/guardians, 

we will hold a Swap Shop on Monday 24th and Tuesday 25th April in the school. Please bring in your unwanted clothes, toys or objects in good condition to swap for something new.

Anything not swapped will be donated to charity or the Art room. 

Kind regards, School Office

There will be no training this eve - Thurs 27th April

This Friday, 21st April, the Immigrant Council of Ireland is organising a Wear Red Day. 

Staff and Students will wear red this Friday as Wear Red Day is an important opportunity for schools and students alike to send out a strong message that we as communities welcome diversity, celebrate it, and take a stand against racism in all forms.

Kind regards, School Office

Dear Parents/Guardians,

We hope that this communication finds you well. We are writing to you with an update regarding our permanent accommodation.

Last week we held meetings here on campus with Ivana Bacik and Chris Andrews to outline our concerns around the tender pause for our permanent accommodation.

Over the past two weeks, both An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar and the Minister for Education, Norma Foley indicated that they hoped to have the matter resolved by Easter.

Yesterday, the Taoiseach was encouraging in his reply to a question from Ivana Bacik on this matter. Please see below transcript:

www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2023-03-21/speech/65/ 

There are also a number of parliamentary questions in to the Minister for Education and the Minister for Public Expenditure to try to ascertain when exactly funding will come through and when construction will commence for our school.

Both Ivana Bacik and Chris Andrews noted the large amount of correspondence they had received from our parent body. As a school, we are hugely appreciative of your support. It is making a huge difference in ensuring that this matter gets the attention that it deserves at the very highest level and that we get the required action.

If you have not yet had an opportunity to reach out to one of our local TDs, we would really appreciate if you could make contact with them by Friday 31st March. The more pressure that we can exert at this point, the greater chance we have of getting the outcome which our school community need and deserve. In this instance, individual emails/letters from individual constituents carry much more weight than a petition approach.

Contact details for some of our local TDs are below. As soon as we receive further information from the Department of Education, we will be in communication with you.

• Chris Andrews - Chris.Andrews@oireachtas.ie
• Ivana Bacik - Ivana.Bacik@oireachtas.ie
• Jim O’ Callaghan - Jim.OCallaghan@oireachtas.ie
• Eamon Ryan - Eamon.Ryan@oireachtas.ie

Thank you again for your continued support.

It is hugely appreciated.

Kind regards,

Pádraig Conaty

Principal

Dear Third Year Parents/Guardians,

We hope that this communication finds you well and that you all had a nice long weekend.

Thank you to all of you who braved the elements for our recent Third Year Parent teacher meeting on Thursday 9th March. It was great to see so many of you in attendance and this will be a great support to your children over the next three months.

Following Mock Examinations, corrections, feedback and reports, if there are any areas where your child needs further clarity, please encourage your child to speak to the relevant teacher. All of our Third Year teachers and the Third Year Team are here to support your child over the remaining ten weeks of the school year.

We are aware that some Third Year parents/guardians are concerned about our lunchtime protocols and the need for students to socialise and eat their lunch outside. Please know that if there was a simple solution to this issue, then it would have been found by now.

As mentioned previously, one of the challenges which we have had this year is with the Department of Education’s reduction in staffing resources for safe supervision of all secondary school students at breaks and lunchtimes.

As a result, we do not have adequate supervision resources to safely supervise students across nine separate base classrooms as well as our three outdoor yard areas/social spaces. In addition to this, with our interim accommodation, we do not have one large canteen area where students can eat or socialise indoors.

This means that that students are required to go outside at break and lunchtime when the weather permits. Thanks to one of our generous Third Year parents, we have installed a large outdoor thermometer on display outside classroom no.4. For days when the outside temperature is below 5 degrees or when it is raining/generally inclement, we are able to provide extra supervision in order to accommodate students remaining in their classrooms at break and lunchtimes.

However, this usually means cancelling all lunchtime clubs and staff lunchtime planning meetings scheduled for that day. While we can put these measures in place on an occasional basis, it is unfortunately, not currently possible to put this practice in place for every lunchbreak.

Currently 30% of our staff supervise every lunch-break with almost every one of our teaching staff involved in coordinating one or more of the fifteen lunchtime clubs that we offer as well as a number of teachers providing specific lunchtime support to some of our students with additional needs.

We acknowledge that this situation is very far from ideal. The solution which we want and which your children deserve is for the Department of Education to deliver on their commitments to our school community and provide us with a permanent home.

Your children /our students deserve dining, social and recreational facilities like their peers in all of our neighbouring schools. However, before we eventually get our permanent home, we will need to work together to find creative, sustainable solutions to such complex, messy problems.

Last week, we met with some Third Year students from both base classes to hear their concerns and explore other possible solutions. One of our local TDs, Chris Andrews also attended this meeting to hear our students outline the current challenges of our interim accommodation. He intends to raise this matter with the Minister for Education this week once the Dail resumes sitting.

This meeting was also be an opportunity for us to provide a platform for greater student leadership in our school. Our commitment to you is that we will try to find a better solution to this issue. However it is possible that until our current teacher allocation grows further, most of the existing practices and procedures may need to stay in place for the rest of Term 2 and Term 3. We expect our current teacher allocation to grow next year by around 35%.

On a different but related note, some of the Third Year parent to teacher interactions on Thursday 9th March, around this issue were clearly not in alignment with our core values of mutual respect and understanding. We very much understand that this issue is of huge importance to many of you as it is to us.

The strength of our school community in anchored around providing the best possible educational experience that we can, given the physical and human resources at our disposal. We all want the same for the young people who attend our school.

Our commitment to each of you, as outlined in our Third parent info talk on 21st September 2022, is that as a parent of one of our students, you will always be heard and will always be treated with respect, empathy and understanding. This is the behaviour which all of the adults here in our school, model every day for your children.

The purpose of parent-teacher meetings in our school are to solely focus on your child’s progress in subject specific areas. Each of these individual meetings are six minutes in duration. Unfortunately, as a result of a focus on lunchtime issues, some of our parents did not get to speak with a number of the subject teachers to whom they had come in to speak to about their child’s progress in a range of subjects.

General issues of a non-subject specific nature should be addressed via a telephone call or an email to your child’s tutor or Year Coordinator.

We kindly ask that going forward, all future interactions between parents and staff are approached in a manner that is respectful and courteous.

We will update you all over the coming weeks after we have met again with third year students, our student council and staff.

Thank you for your continued support.

It is hugely appreciated.

Kind regards,

Pádraig Conaty and Mick Heffernan

Dear Parents/Guardians,

 We hope that this communication finds you well. We are writing to you with regard to some important issues relating to our school’s accommodation.

The Department of Education are currently installing interim accommodation on site for 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. This interim accommodation is being installed on the permanent site on the footprint of the new sports hall. We have been informed that the permanent sports hall will now be delivered as part of Phase 2 of the permanent build along with school garden, basketball courts and final landscaping. This interim accommodation will be handed over in June 2023.

This interim accommodation comprises of two separate blocks with 6 classrooms, full size Science Lab, full size Home Economics classroom, full size Art Room and some storage space for student projects. These new practical classrooms will enable us to offer a wider range of Senior Cycle learning experiences for all of our students. As part of our Transition Year Programme, we will offer tasters in a range of option subjects. In May, we will advertise for a Home Economics teacher who we need to offer Home Economics to Leaving Cert. level. We will also receive an additional basketball court which can be used for P.E lessons in basketball, soccer, circuits, tennis and volleyball as well as much needed recreation space for students at break and lunchtime.

While we are pleased with the delivery of this interim accommodation and the ability to plan for the next two academic years, we are hugely disappointed with the recent news around our permanent accommodation. We very much share your own frustrations around this matter.

You may have seen some articles last week in some national media which highlighted the matter in some detail:

• www.independent.ie/irish-news/education/school-building-projects-delayed-because-of-funding-pressures-42367527.html
• www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41084485.html
• www.irishtimes.com/ireland/education/2023/03/02/school-building-projects-on-hold-due-to-funding-pressures/ 

 We have reached out and contacted all our local elected representatives to highlight our significant concerns and frustrations. Our local TD’s have made representations on our behalf to the Minister for Education, Norma Foley. Deputy Ivana Bacik has also submitted a Parliamentary Question on our behalf to the Minister for Education. In addition to this, we have also made contact with some of the other schools in the Lot 6 tender and a number of TD’s from three separate constituencies, have on our behalf sought to arrange a meeting with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Pascal Donohoe.

Yesterday, the Department of Education informed us that their most immediate priorities are to cater for September 2023 accommodation requirements and that they are engaging with the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform in relation to capital funding pressures in order to continue with the rollout of school building projects to tender and construction in 2023.

As a school community, we really need the help of our parent body to highlight that this situation is simply unacceptable. Your child deserves the same educational facilities as their peers in other schools and pausing this tender process is a false economy given the huge amount of money that has been and will continue to be wasted on temporary modular build accommodation.

It was parent power that led to the decision to open our school in the first place and it is important that your voice is heard throughout this process. We would strongly encourage you to write to your local representatives to seek clarity as to when exactly the tender for our permanent accommodation will go out and what then is the timeline for construction and delivery of our new school.

We need and deserve this clarity to enable us to develop and build upon the vibrant, dynamic and thriving school community which we have all worked so hard to achieve.

Contact details for some of our local TDs are below. As soon as we receive new information from the Department of Education, we will be in communication with you.

• Chris Andrews - Chris.Andrews@oireachtas.ie
• Ivana Bacik - Ivana.Bacik@oireachtas.ie
• Jim O’ Callaghan - Jim.OCallaghan@oireachtas.ie
• Eamon Ryan - Eamon.Ryan@oireachtas.ie

Thank you for your continued support.

It is hugely appreciated.

Kind regards,

Padraig Conaty, Principal

Mick Heffernan, Deputy Principal