The building that housed the Quarteira Professional School of Maritime Management and Technologies for years, and later served to (temporarily) house the GNR Station, has returned to its original function.
Since last school year, the Forte Novo Kindergarten has been operating here, a renovation project that was only inaugurated on October 20th.
The intervention carried out by Loulé City Council involved changing the space located next to one of the main avenues in the city of Quarteira, allowing it to accommodate 125 students (total capacity), aged between 3 and 5 years old.
In a total construction area of more than 800m2 and an outdoor support space, several areas were created such as a service/reception area, 6 activity rooms, 1 small group room, several storage rooms, sanitary facilities for teachers and students, bar/pantry and cafeteria
As Dalila Afonso, director of the Dr. Laura Ayres School Group, stated, the new building aims to provide quality education from the earliest years of life and is a space designed to "welcome, educate and inspire our children, offering them learning conditions that favor their integral development and, above all, the happiness of each one of them."
Representing the Directorate-General for School Establishments of the Algarve, Eugénia Narciso also highlighted the fact that this is an "investment in the future of children and in the development of the community," more than just a material aspect. "It's more than a building; it's a place of affection, sharing, and discovery, where children will always have their first learning and social experiences. It's another significant step on the path to a high-quality, modern, and deeply humanistic public school," she noted.
The Forte Novo Kindergarten is part of the Dr. Laura Ayres Schools cluster, which comprises eight educational establishments, ranging from preschool to secondary school, accommodating over 2,100 students. The renovation and adaptation work that enabled this facility to be established here cost approximately €600,000 and is yet another response to the population growth that the municipality of Loulé, particularly the parish of Quarteira, has seen in recent years.
Despite the work done in the area of Education, "needs grew very quickly and we were unable to keep up with sudden growth that required immediate responses," noted the mayor of Loulé, Vítor Aleixo.
The mayor took advantage of this day to take stock of the work accomplished over his 12 years in office. Among the highlights is the construction of the Loulé Conservatory of Music "Professor Francisco Rosado," a public school for specialized music education, which currently has over 300 students.
In the city of Quarteira, the main investment was the renovation of the EB2,3 D. Dinis School, a major intervention that gave the city “a very dignified school, with the best conditions available in Portugal.”
In the municipal seat, the expansion of another EB2,3, Engº Duarte Pacheco, recently opened, with seven new classrooms and additional facilities; a school with a strong focus on vocational education. In the same cluster, EB1+JI Hortas de Stº António 2 was built, another response to the growing student population in the region.
The mayor also recalled the reopening, adaptation and re-equipment of several educational establishments that had closed, such as Poço Novo, Escanxinas, Alfarrobeira, Goldra and Fonte Santa.
Regarding the future, Vítor Aleixo revealed that the project for the CECQ – Quarteira Education and Culture Center – is already complete, another center dedicated to specialized education, in this case, dance. "It will be a national event! It will be a legacy from this executive to the next mayor," he added.
The Educational Charter also includes plans to build two new secondary schools in Loulé and Almancil, a new EB1+JI in Quarteira, and the renovation of EB2,3 Dr. António de Sousa Agostinho in Almancil and Dr. Laura Ayres Secondary School. The latter will be the site of a "state-of-the-art school."
This morning, the municipal executive also visited the construction site of the future Forte Novo Daycare Center, an investment of approximately 3 million euros that will have capacity for 120 children. The project suffered a setback when the company that had been awarded the contract withdrew from the project. After contracting with a new contractor, work resumed and is progressing well, with the project expected to be operational by the 2026 school year.
