The fire, which caused significant damage to four classrooms, storerooms and equipment which including two special education classrooms and the canteen, left students and teachers devastated.

The damage caused by the fire caused more than $750,000 in damage, but Principal Anne van Dartel said that is now behind them thanks to the fantastic effort of builders and the Dubbo community.

“The fire was traumatic initially because of the initial shock of having such a tragedy happen to our school,” she said.

“But we recovered very quickly because our community was completely on the front foot, positive and supported us beautifully with donations and helping with the cleaning up process.

“From the time the fire happened from the police to the fire brigade to all those people to all the people who offered help, people were exceptionally positive, so from the negativity of the fire came a very positive community rebuild.”

Mrs van Dartel said the new buildings are beautiful and exceptionally functional.

“We have been able to redesign the building to meet the new standards for support units,” she said.

“The rebuild has given us a bathroom that is twice as big as it was, we now have the newest technical support in the classroom for our children. It has also given us a beautiful fresh look to each classroom, they are bright, and the children are delighted to be in them.”

Mrs van Dartel said the school community had reacted well to the new buildings.

“The teachers love them, the kids love them, and I love them, too,” she said.

“It is just lovely to have our school whole again; we are back to being us.

“The students have taken to the new area so well, we are back to having our bikes out, and all I see is smiles from everyone. I’d like to thank the builders especially because they understood that what we wanted was not just classrooms, these are students with very special needs in many cases and they have built with that in mind beautifully.”