Ballintleva NS celebrates Tidy Towns success
Lorraine Garvey, Mary O’Brien Healy, Elizabeth Richardson, Michael Gately, and Emma Gately at the presentation of Tidy Towns awards. At the awards ceremony Ballintleva NS, Curraghboy was named the regional winner of the SuperValu School Award for the North West & West region.
A Roscommon school has had great success in this year's SuperValu Tidy Towns competition.
Ballintleva NS, Curraghboy was the regional winner of the SuperValu School Award for the North West & West region, securing €1,000 in funding for the school.
Principal Pádraig O' Callaghan told the Herald that the entire school community was delighted with the win.
“We are a small school in a rural area. We are a four teacher school with two SNAs and we have 47 pupils,” he said. “The region takes in Connacht, as well as counties Cavan, Donegal, and Monaghan. We were one of the top four schools in the country.” Mr O’Callaghan, who recently took up his position, praised the former principal Mary O’Brien Healy as “a real driving force behind this”.
“It was fitting she was in attendance in Croke Park for the award ceremony to receive the award,” he said. “Two other parents who are centrally involved and who gave up their own time, also attended as well as their sixth class children. I am hugely aware and grateful of the fact that parents were centrally involved in this. The Dysart Tidy Towns has also been very supportive.”
Mr O’Callaghan said that the school is surrounded by picturesque landscape and beautiful gardens, into which the parents have put a huge amount of work.
“There is a handball alley that was built in the 1930s, and it is a heritage monument now. We have beautiful flower arrangements, raised vegetable beds and bug hotels. You have a biodiversity wall where children can learn about wildlife. We also harvest rainwater for the drier times of the year for watering the plants. There’s also an active schools walkway, as well as bird feeders and nest boxes.”
The school is also in the final of the council’s Greener Spaces Award at the end of November.
“We are really looking forward to that and we are delighted to be finalists,” he said.
Mr O’Calllaghan added that work on an astroturf pitch will soon begin. “A huge amount of the funding that is going towards that came from parents and community people, so the surroundings are getting even better. And that is down in a very large part to the efforts of the community,” he said.
