€11k granted to put window in storeroom for teaching pupils

The Department of Education has made €11,000 available to install a window in a storeroom being used to teach three children with autism at a new primary school in Cork.

However, two mothers say they will not let their children back into a room with fewer facilities than the rest of the pupils at Rushbrooke NS in Cobh.

Marcia Fleming withdrew 10-year-old daughter Crea from classes when she discovered she was to be taught in the storeroom with no window. Though the emergency funding will lower the ceiling and put in a window and a glass-panel door, she said it would not have the toilet facilities that are in every other classroom in the €4.2m building that opened this month.

“These children have the most severe toileting needs in the school, and the window will be looking out on an earthen bank, but these kids need stimulation. It definitely won’t be acceptable. She was enrolled in this school long before the plans were drawn up and I won’t have her be a pawn in this row between the department and the school.”

The Department of Education said last week that it only learned last February, when building was nearing completion, that the school had enrolled an additional infant class in 2009. This would have left the school a classroom short, but the department said it was told by the school in April that it would have enough space for the 25 mainstream classes and three autism classes.

After receiving an application on Monday, the department approved €11,000 for the emerg-ency works yesterday afternoon. Junior minister and Cork East TD Sean Sherlock said he hoped the school could sit down with the parents with a view to bringing the children back to school as quickly as possible.

Principal Dónal Ó Ciarán it was planned to have the work done earlier this year, but the department turned the school down.

However, work will begin very soon.

Amy Read, who withdrew her son Callum almost a fortnight ago, has asked the National Council for Special Education about finding an alternative school. She said she would not send him back unless he was in a properly equipped autism class.

“I’m sick and tired of my vulnerable child being caught up in the political finger-pointing; the pupils don’t seem to matter to anyone in all this. They were better off in the prefabs in the old school, at least they were treated the same as everybody else there,” she said.