St. Patrick’s N.S. is the holder of seven Green Flags which have been awarded by An Taisce for various green school initiatives (recycling, energy, water conservation, travel, biodiversity and global citizenship) implemented in the school. Once awarded, work must be continually done in each of these areas to retain the flags.

The pupils recycle phones, batteries and stamps and have several recycling bins in their classroom (as do the staff in the staff room), are conscious of energy and water usage and work on biodiversity through class work and in our award winning school garden.

As part of our work on travel, the school BOWOW initiative returns tomorrow Wednesday the 26th of February and on each Wednesday afterwards until the Easter holidays.

• For those new to Slane N.S., BOWOW stands for Bike/Bus or Walk on Wednesday. It is only made possible by the fantastic support of Parents and Guardians.
• By walking or cycling to school children get regular exercise, learn about road safety and pedestrian skills and become more conscious of levels of traffic congestion and air pollution in their local environment.
• The Walking Bus is a group of children who walk to school at set times with set stops, supervised by their parents and guardians. Children must be accompanied by a parent or guardian to join the walking bus. Please find attached the routes and times of the walking bus each Wednesday.
• If you are not on a walking route or if the times do not suit, you are still more than welcome to walk your own child to school each Wednesday.
• For those living further away from the school, we would encourage you to car pool and park and stride to school, instead of driving directly to the school car park.

• We also encourage pupils to cycle to school.
• We will record the total amount of pupils using the initiative and record the results over the weeks ahead.
• We also hope that the initiative will encourage pupils and their parents/guardians to use these alternative travel methods every day of the week.
• Pupils can earn points for their class by using the suggested ways of travelling to school each Wednesday. The class with the most points will win the “Golden Boot” award to show that that they have reduced the carbon footprint.
• We would like to thank the Parent Association and all Parents/Guardians for all their work to date in setting up the BOWOW initiative for 2020. The local Gardaí have also been informed of the BOWOW initiative.