We are shocked, appalled and devastated.
Our caretaker, John, was working hard in the school on Sunday morning, mounting noticeboards and coat hooks for us and doing the million other jobs he does behind the scenes to keep our school functioning well and looking great... When he heard voices that seemed too close-by... By the time he got all the way down the stairs and out the door of the school, it was too late... They had pulled up ALL our flowers, upended our lovely new window boxes, thrown the soil all over the place and taken the flowers.

Our children had planted those flowers, our parents had helped and John and his family had spent their summer watering them and minding them to keep them safe and to help them to grow. After all of that work, John had to spend Sunday evening clearing up the soil so that we'll at least have a safe car park for Monday morning.

It is very hard to believe that anyone would do this.

Our gates were locked. These people broke through a fence to carry out this destruction. Please, if you live near us and see anything like this happen again or know who did this to our flower beds, either tell us or report it to the Gardai.

Update: Our wonderful caretaker, John, not only cleared up the soil on Sunday evening but planted more flowers so that the entrance to our school still looks well. How lucky we are to have him!

Citywest ETNS is excited to welcome our first ever Special Needs Assistant, Linda Adamson O'Donnell, who will start with us tomorrow, Thursday 4th September!

This is a wonderful addition to our staff and will be a great support to all of the children. Linda will be mainly working in Claire's class but will also support the children at yard time and so everyone will get to know her!

We know that you will all join us in welcoming Linda to our community, as you have our other new members of staff and our new pupils and families!

We are very happy to draw to your attention a slight change to our after-school schedule...
Capoeira for Junior Infants will now be on Tuesdays.

This means that there is an after-school class available for every child in the school on each day Monday to Thursday and that Thursday is the only day you have to choose between two classes - Spanish and keyboard!

It also means that there are separate after-school classes for Junior Infants and Senior Infants for both Capoeira and Speech and Drama, which not only gives smaller class sizes but also means that more children can be accommodated and that each class can be better tailored to the needs of the children involved.

Capoeira and Speech and Drama for Junior Infants will be held in the reception hall rather than the PE hall so it is a lot less climbing for our littlest ones at the end of a day's work!

Over the coming week, many of the after-school providers will come in and do a demonstration for the children so that they will know what they would do at each class, should they join. We have had great feedback on our programme and we look forward to hearing joyous and varied sounds in the afternoons!

Now that everyone is back and settled in, we can take some time to look around...  We feel very lucky to have very large classrooms and very small class sizes! 

5 of our 7 classes have 22 pupils or less! The other two classes have just 25 and 27 pupils each. This gives every child a great opportunity at school - with more teacher time per child and more opportunity for each child to speak and be heard, combined with so much space, brand new resources and, most importantly, enthusiastic and dedicated teachers, it is a wonderful opportunity for each child.

All parents and guardians of our pupils are invited to our Parent Information Evening on Thursday 11th September from 6.50pm to 9pm to learn more about our school and about your child's class in particular, as well as to get to know one another.

Our teaching team is complete! We are thrilled to welcome Orlaith Seagrave and Kerry Harkin to our team as support teachers in our school.

Orlaith is our full-time support teacher. She will be working with every class and is excited about getting to know all of the children and doing interesting work with each class. Already, she and Mary Treasa have set up a Writing Group in 1st class - we can't wait to read some great compositions from our budding authors!

Kerry is a teacher we share with Adamstown Castle ETNS and so she will bring an interesting perspective and new ideas to our school.