Introducing (not quite all of) Monkstown Educate Together’s Green School Committee!

Ciaran, Jack, Thomas, Alannah

Daniel, James, Phelim, Maja

Alexandra, Iseult, Dearbhail

Tara, Jessica, Theo, Josh

Fionn,Emily, Henrika, Leah,

Leah, jasmin, Odhran, Pierce

Work starts on our 4^th green flag

The theme for our new programme is transport.

Between 2004-6 we worked towards the green flag with the theme Reduce Reuse Recycle

Between 2006-8 we completed the theme energy.

Between 2008-11 we did everything in our power to conserve water and were awarded the green flag water.

Our current theme is a very interesting one. We are interested in reducing the number of car journeys that our families take on a daily, weekly, and on an annual basis. We are concentrating on specific weekends and on specific Wednesdays to see if we could get families to walk,cycle, take public transport instead of car journeys.

We will examine the health benefits of more exercise, the environmental benefit of reduced car emissions, and the overall wellbeing of being in the fresh air.

It is a theme that depends to a huge extent, on parents getting behind our aims and supporting our efforts to encourage children to walk to school if at all possible. We appreciate the ‘crazily hectic’ nature of most family mornings and so we have asked for support for only 3 Wednesdays between now and the end of this school year and perhaps 4/5 in the school year 2012-13. We have identified 3 ‘drop-off’ sites, where busy parents can simply and safely ‘drop-off’ their children into the charge of walking-bus adult leaders, and head off to work. We have also picked these sites because parents can park and walk with their children. The sites are approximately a 10 min walk from school. We then count how many children walked that morning and compare it to our initial audit of school transport, taken on Nov 11^th 2011. Our aim is to reduce the number of either occasional or regular car journeys, by 10%. It is an achievable goal, and just think how much easier it would be no to have to face the traffic chaos of the METNS site each morning.

METNS WANTS TO WOW!!!!!!!

O.k, so WOWing is walking to school on a Wednesday or at the very least, park-and-striding. We also want ot COW!!!! Cycling is just as healthy and environmentally friendly. We have also identified specific weekends where we will hope to swap one car journey at the weekends for a walk.

Our COW / WOW dates are

Walk on Weekend January 27th /28th

Walk on Wednesday February 22nd

Walk on Weekend March 24th/25th

Walk on Wednesday April 18th

Walk on Wednesday May 23rd National walk To Work Day

Walk on Weekend June 16th /17th

The children in 6th did a walkability audit to identify park-and-stride sites for busy parents. the sites will be manned by parents who will safely walk the children to school. Here are the sites

This site is on the Upper Glenageary Road, half way between the Honeypark Junction and the Glenegeary roundabout.

This site is on Kill Avenue, in the Deans Grange business park, (NCT centre at the back). It is just before Kill Of The Grange Church. It is a pay to park centre €1 an hour. You can use it as a drop off site.

This site is on the Rochestown Road, in front of houses, and on the left before the Rehab Hospital, as you drive down from the Pottery Rd Y intersection.

Adult friendly maps of the sites are on show inside the school door. It would be great to pick a convenient site and Park-and-Stride as a family, or drop the children off and go to wook safe in the knowledge that your children will walk to school safely.

6th class, complete with clipboards, walk to find suitable park-and-stride sites.

Yet another aspect to our fabulous Green School Programme……Our Fabulous Garden

It is a bit dull at the moment as we come into the Spring, but we will soon be waking the beds up and the planting season starts about St Patrick’s Day. We start with the spuds of course.

But 6th class had the pleasure of planting a Native Irish Hedgerow in the first section of the garden. It is an incredibly windswept area and we need to get the hedgerow up and going to provide shelter for whatever we plant in this space in years to come. We started at the beginning of the hedgerows life by planting whips of hazel, hawthorn, privet, wild rose and a few other vareties.