Only the children at the centre of yesterday's protest in Rathkeale were rejoicing as they fell into step with the first day of summer and forgot about the dusty school atmosphere.
An empty school bus trundled through the town at 8.45 a.m., the driver forgotten. A little over 30 pupils attended classes yesterday, briefly achieving the best pupil-teacher ratio in the State after 27 teachers turned up for work.
On the picket lines, meanwhile, the weather was the only unplanned part of the strategy deployed by parents outside the two primary schools. A carefully staged campaign involved contacting the national and local media before the protest, ensuring maximum publicity as TV camera crews and press photographers descended on the town.
A detailed press release outlined the protesters' complaints and another document chronicled the events since the campaign began last September.
A few children, intent on their own publicity, attempted to distract an interviewee doing a piece in Irish for TG4.
But the blue skies put everybody in good humour, making the protest all the more pleasurable and the fluorescent placards all the brighter.
News broadcasts were listened to on the hour and the stories in the newspapers were weighed up.
Just eleven out of 110 pupils attended St Joseph's boys' school and, across the road, about 20 attended St Anne's, whose full complement is 222. Ms Ann McMahon, a visiting teacher whose job is to ensure Traveller school attendance, turned a deaf ear to various entreaties as she entered St Anne's with children in tow.
Inside the schools, the teachers, relieved of their duties, hung around staff rooms as yet another day's education was lost to the nation's charges.