This article is from page 24 of the 2009-06-02 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 24 JPG
ONE of north Clare’s longest serv- ing schools is now also one of the county’s best equipped following the opening of a new €500,000 exten- sion at Kilnamona National School.
The Bishop of Killaloe, Willie Walsh, officially ushered in a new era for the school alongside parents, teachers, pupils and invited guests in Kilnamona last Friday.
The school, which has been educat- ing local children for more than 120 years, has seen a significant growth in numbers over the last number of years.
“Part of the role of the school Board of Management is to plan for the needs that the school will have going into the future and that is something the previous boards of management did between 2003 and 2007,” said Tony Barrett, Chairperson of the Board of Management.
“We saw that we had a growing school population, we had come back up from a three-teacher school to a five-teacher school. With that in mind we realised that the school building and educational facilities we had weren’t big enough for the erowth projected for the school.”
The extension includes an extra classroom, a resource teaching room, a special needs room, an IT room and extra administrative space. The work was completed by Pat Carmody Gros male noysmaneeem seer
“We really did need something that would bring the school into the 21st century. The school in Kilnamona has been there since 1889, so it’s a very old school,’ continued Tony.
“There are two aspects to any school. This extension has revolu- tionised one aspect, which is the physical school itself. But the second more important aspect is the teachers and teaching quality at the school. You don’t need to have a very mod- ern building to do that well and we have an excellent staff in Kilnamona under the principal, Sean Crowe.
“We were also very careful not to destroy any of the old school and to maintain its original architectural
style – we took great care to marry the new extension onto the older building and the new and the old now sit very comfortably together. “There are so many people who helped to make this possible. First of all the former Board of Management of the school who had the foresight to see that this would be needed, the parents of the parish have also been very supportive of the application, we would also like to thank the De- partment of Education for granting
the funding, the Oireachtas members at the time who supported our appli- cation for funding, our architect Ed- die Grace, Pat Carmody Construc- tion and the Parish of Kilnamona who actually gave us the land that we needed to build this extension on.”