A TEACHERS strike at the Sacred Heart secondary school in Drogheda began yesterday morning, despite last minute attempts to avoid it.
The 34 teachers, who are members of the ASTI, voted for the action, which centres on the appointment last year of a vice principal.
The school's board of management said yesterday: "The purpose of this all out strike is to put pressure on [the board] to appoint an unsuccessful candidate."
The union claims the appointment was appealed by a member at the school and that arbitration backed the appellant, but the board of management did not implement that decision.
Teachers continued to teach Leaving Certificate students in another part of Drogheda yesterday while their colleagues placed pickets on the school. "We never thought it would come to this. We never felt we would be picketing outside the school we loved," said one teacher, who has been with the school for 13 years.
The school principal, Ms Mar Caffrey, said the board of management had always been prepared to talk to the union. "We spent three weeks working with Mr Jack Marrinan on putting a proposal together . . . We put the matter before an eminent legal mind," she said, but the proposals which emerged were not acceptable to the union.
The board of management also claimed it had offered to reinterview all candidates or readvertise the position, but these offers were refused by the ASTI. "Since the dispute began, the ASTI have refused to move off their absolute position that winning an appeal means automatic appointment. No dispute can be solved from absolute positions."
An ASTI spokesman rejected the board's statement, saying: "Such a proposal was never made, and this was confirmed to us by the facilitator. This dispute will end when the school board sees sense and follows the example of every other school and implements the binding arbitration finding. We have no alternative but to strike: this has been going on for six months.
"There was independent arbitration six months ago ... It has taken a long time for it to get to this stage," the union said.
At a meeting between the board and parents on Monday night, the parents expressed their anger at the situation and, after a show of hands, said they were dissatisfied with the board's handling of the dispute. Mr Pat Clarke, a parent representative on the board of management, said: "I believe that another week of negotiation would have resolved things. It is a pity the facilitation process did not manage to get off the ground."
A spokesman for the Department of Education said the dispute was a local one between the teachers and their employers. He said the Minister was monitoring the situation closely and it was being dealt with locally by an agreed facilitator, Mr Marrinan.
The Department was hopeful he could bring about a resolution, he added.