DEAR DEPUTY HELEN McEntee, 

I am the principal of a school in Tipperary whose beloved secretary and caretaker are taking part in the ongoing strike to call for parity with their colleagues.

We are waiting for the Department of Education and Youth and Fórsa to sign an agreement. Until that happens, our school community is at a loss while our secretary and caretaker have to strike to call for fair treatment with regard to their pension and leave entitlements.

For reference, we are a small all-girls secondary school without DEIS status serving a town where all of the primary schools have DEIS status (a conundrum for another day!).

Our school office is closed. I’d like you to try to understand what that means for our school community.

Students who weren’t here on the first few days of school before the strike started don’t know where to get a book that they might be missing. There is nowhere to go if they have forgotten their locker key.

They have deposits for school trips, but no one to take them to. They are unsure where to go if they feel unwell and the person who always signs them in when they return from an appointment is now absent.

The smiling person who knows every student in our school by name, often knows their parents’ numbers without looking it up, is outside on the picket line asking for equality with her Education and Training Board (ETB) counterparts.

For parents, Lorraine, our secretary, is the first person who meets and greets them. She is the problem-solver when they can’t access the school app or can’t get pay something online. She refunds them if trips have to be cancelled. She is the backbone to our school.

Lorraine and Matt, our caretaker, are our colleagues. Currently, we have to pass them on the picket line. This is heartbreaking. We all fully support their cause.

The start of any academic year is busy but normally Lorraine and Matt are there to support everyone, finding books, relocating furniture and setting up new students on the school system. Without these key staff, the settling in period is going to take a lot longer and is far from seamless.

Our deputy principal Catherine and I went home last week absolutely floored after doing the jobs of four people while unable to actually do the jobs. Our school bins are full, our corridors (normally sparkling) have dust and grime on them and it is taking every bone in my body not to take up a sweeping brush and mop to clean it.

I haven’t, however, out of respect for our caretaker Matt. Our building is over 150 years old and every person who visits normally comments on how well kept, welcoming and homely it is. 

Catherine and I both teach, St Anne’s being a small school, and our phone apps tell us we are doing over 14,000 steps during our school day.

In St Anne’s, we consider ourselves family, and currently, two of our family are outside our gates. This isn’t right and cannot continue.

I’d like to ask you, Minister McEntee, what is being done to sort this issue, as from where I sit, very little conversation has taken place since last Wednesday.

This issue should have been sorted long before the return to school. Matt and Lorraine should never have to be put in this position where they feel they have to stand outside the building that they have worked for years while their colleagues enter, completely uncomfortable that this is the situation we all find ourselves in.

And while this isn’t about us principals and deputies, once again we find ourselves unsupported by the Department of Education and Youth, expecting us to work effectively without the backbone of our schools. As the dispute continues, we will end up burnt out before the year has barely begun.

If anyone from the department asked any student, parent or teacher who are the people who are most important in running our school, you can be guaranteed that Lorraine and Matt would be some of the first mentioned.

As principal, I cannot continue to do my job effectively without them, and I implore the Department of Education and Youth and Department of Finance to enter talks to sort this situation out so our schools and students don’t suffer any further without our key personnel.

Jeanne Dowling is the principal of St Anne’s Secondary School in Tipperary town.