School closing down. Experiences?

beguilingrogue

Our school is closing down. We have been told the closure will be finalised in between 3 and 5 years, with no students been taken in for 1st year in Sept 2014. We have been told that all current 1st years will complete their JC and then have to leave.

Although a sizeable number of schools have closed in recent years, none of us know other teachers or principals who have experienced this, so perhaps somebody here might know what we ought to expect now that the decision has been made. It is a cause of uncertainty for all of us that the timeframe is not specific, with the 3-year minimum, when questioned, not been set in stone (i.e. the school *could* close earlier).

For instance, once the decision is made did other schools close sooner than initially planned? Did parents stay loyal to the school or did they generally prefer to get their child adjusted into the inevitable new school asap? How does a school decide which teachers to lay off first when numbers decline if all teachers are teaching compulsory JC subject? (with fewer students from next Sept surely we will have to lose teachers?) How much choice do permanent teachers have when it comes to moving to a new school? Do people who hold a CID also have a right to a job in another school? ...

Any advice or experiences will be appreciated.

Debaserer

Our experience was that more than half of 1st years left the school to settle in as quickly as possible to the school they would be doing their state exams in, and to make sure they got a place in the school of their choice. I wouldn't ask for loyalty, as parents enrolled their children in a school with the expectation that they would sit their Leaving Cert exam there, and moving schools and joining a new class can be really difficult for some kids. Many 2nd years also left. Most 3rd years stayed, and all senior students stayed.

What this meant was that in the final year of a three year closure cycle, we only had 6th years and a small amount of 3rd years. It's a strange year as you only have two or three classes to teach in a day. Teachers are still needed for each individual subject, so nobody was redeployed before closure unless they specifically asked to be (some did this to have more choice in terms of redeployment as dept. were not looking to redeploy a few teachers of each subject at the same time in the same radius around the school).

All CIDs and permanent staff were redeployed. Any teachers without these contracts had to find a new job themselves.

Teachers carried posts with them too, in the expectation that these duties could be carried out in their new schools (unless DP or something).

A person is appointed in the department to oversee the closure and sort out redeployments. This person met with our staff and was fairly open to dialogue in the early stages. After closure, in terms of choice, most teachers were allocated a single school, but a few had a choice of two. If a teacher wasn't happy with the school offered, the choice given was to take the vacancy offered or resign your post and look for a different school yourself.
But it's great to have a redeployment scheme. Imagine looking for a job the way things are now in teaching.

If there was no job vacancy for a specific subject grouping in the year of school closure, these teachers were put into another school on a temporary basis and then redeployed again when a vacancy did arise a year or two later in a different school.

Some teachers took early retirement instead of moving schools. Some teachers taught in their new school for a year or two and then left teaching altogether as they found the change too challenging for them personally (strangely, these were some of the best teachers we had). Others were happier in their new school than in their old one. It's a lottery really. You might get lucky and be redeployed into a well run school.

It's not easy changing schools and starting out all over again. You need to build up a reputation again among students, and sometimes even with principals, who had no say in your appointment to the new school, and may have wanted another person already in the school for that job. This was a rarity though, most teachers found that their new schools were really welcoming places.

Please bear in mind that all of this was pre CP and HR, so I don't know what changes might be made since then.

Good luck to you all.

beguilingrogue

Thank you so much for that especially helpful response, debaserer. As I suspected numbers will decline faster than the current timeframe. I assume this will also have very important consequences for teachers who are approaching CID in that they could decline from 22 hours per week now to far fewer than that in the year before they have a CID entitlement and that it could be wise for them to start looking for another job sooner rather than later.