OUT OF THE ASHES
New Our Lady of Angels School opens its doors after fire:
RIDLEY TOWNSHIP » After spending nearly two years at Cardinal O’Hara High School because a devastating fire destroyed their own school, students at Out Lady of Angels Regional School in Ridley Township are finally back “home” in a brand-new school building that was blessed recently by Philadelphia Archbishop Nelson Perez.
In was during the night of July 18, 2018, when an electrical malfunction in the attic of the old school sparked the blaze that soon reduced the twostory building to rubble. With just two months before the 2018-2019 school year was scheduled to begin, school officials scrambled to find suitable space to house the nearly 400 student body until a new school could be built.
Officials at Cardinal O’Hara stepped forward with an offer to house the OLA students in an unused wing of the high school in Marple.
In late fall of 2018 construction began on the new two-story classroom wing of OLA on the site of the old building and by September it was ready to receive students.
“We opened for class
room learning on Sept.
2 for students K through
8 and pre-K opened on
Sept.8,” said OLA Principal Susan Lowe.
The new wing features
20 classrooms, a resource room, STEM lab, library, art and music rooms and an elevator.
“It is absolutely beautiful,” Lowe said. “Everything is state of the art. Space inside was reconfigured to give us more room and there is a lot of natu
ral light coming into the building. We will have a grand opening with tours, a mass and another blessing as soon as we are able.”
There are 328 students enrolled this year with 53 students continuing with virtual learning at home. In addition to Lowe, there are 23 faculty members, eight classroom aides and three office workers. Although this is Lowe’s third year as principal it is the first year she will be on the
actual site of the school. The fire broke out the day after she took over as principal.
Lowe said it was bitter sweet leaving Cardinal O’Hara because there wasn’t time for a proper good-by when all schools in Pennsylvania were shutdown in mid-March because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When schools were ordered to close we though we would be coming back
in two weeks,” she explained. “They were very generous to us at Cardinal O’Hara.”
Lowe laughingly recalled the thing that seemed to impress the students the most at O’Hara were the lockers. “They loved having lockers,” she said.
Lowe also spoke of the of the archbishop’s prayer service at the recent blessing
ceremony.
“He said ‘This is what hope looks like.’ It was a beautiful message and I want to to say the same thing,” she said.
Among those at the pray service was the Rev. James Goerner, who was recently named pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church where the school is located.