RIDLEY TOWNSHIP — For the second straight year, students at Our Lady of Angels Catholic School will temporarily attend classes at Cardinal O'Hara High School while construction continues at the site of the OLA building destroyed in an early-morning fire in July 2018.
"School will start Sept. 4 at O'Hara," said OLA Principal Susan Lowe. "We have two wings with 20 classrooms, an office, a library and use of the gym and the cafeteria."
Students from OLA – 315 strong – will be bused to O'Hara by the respective public schools districts in which they reside. In the case of students who live in the Ridley School District, they will assemble in the parking area of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church. where OLA is located, and board the Ridley bus at that site.
Construction on the new OLA school is moving along with the steel frame work completed on what will be a two-story wing with 20 classrooms, a resource room and an elevator. An addition to the classroom wing destroyed in the fire was heavily damaged by smoke and water and required extensive renovation. Lowe said that portion of the school was gutted and reconfigured to include administrative offices, a library, the STEM lab and the TV studio.
"The gym is also there and the cafeteria has been enlarged," Lowe said.
Lowe was principal of nearby Notre Dame deLourdes School on Fairview Road for 10 of the 27 years she spent at that school. She was to begin her first year as principal at OLA in September 2018.
"I again want to thank Cardinal O'Hara High School for their help," Lowe said. "It will be bittersweet when we leave."
Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish business manager Gail McCoach spoke of the cooperation by township officials for being so supportive and the community in general. She had a special word of gratitude for the first responders who answered the alarm in the early morning hours of July 15, 2018.
"It really turned a tragedy into a blessing because of the people we've been dealing with," McCoach said.
