Baptism of ire in school row
The upmarket Wicklow town of Greystones has been divided in a bitter dispute over admissions policy at a local school
IT HAS proved to be the most unholy of rows – an unsightly quarrel over a primary school that threatens to tear apart the once-close-knit Protestant community in Greystones, Co. Wicklow.
Already, a popular, long-serving school principal has resigned in protest, several other teachers have handed in their notice and the local canon has stepped down, temporarily, as chairman of the school’s board of management.
And this week it was revealed that a retired archdeacon has been suspended from taking part in church services for six months after he spoke out about the fracas.
There have been tempestuous public meetings, which have left school staff members in tears, anonymous leaflet drops, accusations of religious fundamentalism and charges of online ‘vitriolic and biased coverage, which at times has bordered on incitement to hatred against a minority community in the town’.
It’s just not the sort of behaviour you’d expect from the normally genteel denizens of one of Ireland’s most affluent coastal retreats, home of the Happy Pear twins and nicknamed G4 thanks to its steep property prices, the highest in the country outside Dublin.
Indeed, no matter who you talk to from the town about this ongoing dispute, the one thing they all agree on is how shocking it is that this wrangle over how St Patrick’s National School is run has blown up into something so poisonous and putrid, and how at the moment it’s hard to see how it will ever be fully resolved.
Of course there are run-ins about school policy in villages, towns and cities all over the country, all the time. But in a town like Greystones, bursting at the seams with well-heeled professionals, it would seem that tensions can run a little higher if people feel they are being pushed around, especially by the church.
ON one side is a sizeable chunk of parents of pupils at St Patrick’s NS, spearheaded by, among others, Dr Ciara Kelly of Newstalk and Operation Transformation fame. On the other, the school’s BoM and a smaller, much less vocal group of parents.
The problem? The school’s admission policy. At least that is what’s most commonly offered up as the issue that has driven a wedge through this normally happy hamlet. When you look a little deeper, however, it would seem there are several issues at the heart of this row, and many different viewpoints.
As one person familiar with the intricacies of this dispute told the Irish Daily Mail this week: ‘Some of this is simply down to “old Greystones” meeting “new Greystones”. It’s just very sad that it’s got to this point. And that it’s being played out so publicly.’
St Patrick’s first came to national attention at the beginning of this school year, when a letter written by the former archdeacon and vicar of Greystones, Rev Edgar Swann, to the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Michael Jackson, was leaked to the media.
Rev Swann wrote how he believed the community was being ‘torn apart’ due to the controversy over enrolment policies at the school and claimed the Church was being pulled into ‘public ridicule’. He also asked the archbishop to step in and dissolve the school’s BoM.
‘The matter is damaging the school, which has lost excellent teachers, and it is causing a serious crisis in the parish,’ he added.
The offending school admissions policy has been claimed by many to be the fault of current local vicar Canon David Mungavin, who allegedly decreed that the children of families who actually attend his church would be given priority when allocating places at the school. He declined to comment on the situation to the Mail this week. It would seem this policy has been in place for some time but has been more strictly enforced in the last year or two.
‘The Protestant population in Greystones has increased hugely in the last decade or so and there’s a huge pressure for places at St Patrick’s, there always has been,’ explains one parent and former pupil at the school. ‘It has a reputation as being a really good school and has excellent resources.
‘I know there are about seven other primary schools in Greystones, but you’ll find a lot of parents really want their kids to go to St Patrick’s. They’ll even go so far as to get them christened as [Church of Ireland]. But then, that’s nothing new when it comes to getting kids into schools in Ireland.
‘You were always expected to show a christening certificate but it seems Canon Mungavin went one step further and wanted potential pupils, or at least their parents, to be regular churchgoers.’
Another parent, who has several children in the school, admits: ‘In writing nothing changed. It was the interpretation of the admissions policy that changed. It became more and more difficult to get in, even if a sibling was already in there, which had never been the case before. It became clear, you had to be seen to go to church.’
Another issue that incensed many parents was the revelation that the BoM had turned down the offer of an extra teacher for this school year by the Department of Education, which was seen by some as an effort by the BoM to keep the school small and exclusive.
‘We had been sent a letter about it but it was incredibly cryptic,’ one of the parents explains. ‘The school is understaffed as it is and although the principal, vice-principal and teachers all wanted one, the BoM rejected the offer. When that became known, people wanted answers. It made no sense to anybody.
‘I do think they are trying to keep it small to make it more exclusive, there can be no other reason.’
Some suspect the reason the extra teacher was rejected was to stop the school expanding.
Those on the side of the BoM, however, insist there is a very good logic for rejecting the offer.
‘The real issue at St Patrick’s is probably about expansion, yes,’ says a source close to the decision makers. ‘But when schools are extended you have to think about the environment they are situated in. There are very serious infrastructure issues, where things are already very tight.
‘There was a chance to expand but it was thought that there was a real, more urgent need for another new primary school in Greystones, down near the Charlesland Estate. So the bigger picture was looked at: the needs of the wider community.’
It was issues such as these that caused the long-serving principal of the school, Eileen Jackson, to hand in her notice last June. After quitting, she wrote a letter to parents telling them she was leaving because of the school’s ‘new direction’ in making entry into ‘Statefunded education a collateral benefit of parochial engagement’.
Some parents quickly rallied, including Dr Ciara Kelly, whose children are in St Patrick’s. The radio presenter started a petition. While she didn’t speak to the Mail this week, she has previously said Eileen Jackson was ‘being forced’ to resign, before claiming the BoM had changed the school’s CoI ethos to be less inclusive, and that Ms Jackson can’t stand over it.
‘This comes on top of the BoM turning down an extra teacher – our school was entitled at the end of last year – which would have improved pupil-teacher ratios,’ she said. ‘So the BoM have... presided over us having less teachers than our kids are entitled to and losing our excellent school principal.’
OVER the summer there were a number of meetings between the parents and the BoM during which things got very heated. ‘There was one in particular, towards the end of August,’ says one of the parents. ‘It just descended into a shouting match, it was awful. It felt like it became something of a mob. We’d been told the future of the school was going to be decided at this meeting. But in the end, very few actual substantive issues were sorted out. That’s when we stepped out of things a bit; we felt uncomfortable with how things were going.
‘It’s been the culmination of a few things; the vice-principal also left, who was an excellent guy, and the school secretary, who had been there for years, retired. A couple of other teachers handed in their notice. Then there was the belief that some people didn’t want the school to expand.
‘It touched a nerve. There’s a feeling from some quarters that the Church has been throwing its weight around and so there was a visceral reaction to that.
‘But perhaps the biggest part of the problem, I think, is that Eileen Jackson was very well-liked. She was a former teacher there and then came back to take over as principal. Edgar Swann is also very popular, he’d been there for years and years and has a very easy manner and was at the heart and soul of everything. They were sort of a “dream team”. They got on very well together, and for a long time everything ticked along beautifully. Then about seven years ago, David Mungavin took over as reverend and chairman of the BoM. When he took over, well, let’s just say things changed. And people don’t like change.’
The BoM declined to comment to the Mail.
When details of Edgar Swann’s letter to Archbishop Jackson came out in early September, there was further consternation in the town.
‘I don’t think people realise but it’s a very well-known, albeit unwritten rule, that when a vicar retires they don’t continue to live in the parish,’ says one-well connected member of the Protestant community.
‘And they absolutely never interfere with the work of the new reverend, it’s considered very poor form. You might not agree with your successor, but it’s not your job any more.’
‘I think Edgar spoke out because of his loyalty to Eileen,’ says a Greystones resident. ‘They spent so many years working together and he possibly felt duty-bound to stand up for her.’
Regardless of his reasons for stepping in – and those close to Swann insist it was nothing to do with the new vicar and everything to do with injustices he felt Ms Jackson had to deal with at St Patrick’s – the local diocese made their feelings about the matter crystal clear last month.
ARCHBISHOP Jackson sent him a letter in midNovember stating that he was removing his permission for him to officiate at church services until next Easter. It’s understood that he said the reason for this decision was because Rev Swann had spoken out about Canon Mungavin.
The office of the archbishop has said it has no intention of commenting on the matter, but it’s a move that has only caused to further inflame the situation in Greystones.
‘Things had simmered down,’ says one source close to the Church. ‘I’d have to agree with that, things were loosening up and smiles were returning.’
Rev Swann is believed to be distraught at the decision. When contacted this week by the Mail he said he would not be speaking publicly until a letter he has sent to the archbishop about his licence to officiate being revoked is answered.
‘I can’t quite believe what the diocese has done or why,’ one parent told the Mail. ‘Everything had gone quiet, it felt like they had swept it under the carpet there for a while, perhaps expecting people to forget. But what they have done now to Edgar Swann, it’s unforgivable. As someone else said to me today, it’s despicable.’
As often happens in these situations, many have taken their gripes online. Indeed, so extreme has the reaction been on social media and local blogs that the acting chairperson of the BoM, Canon Adrienne Galligan, sent out a letter to the parents of St Patrick’s in mid-October.
Earlier that week things had taken an even more sinister turn when leaflets where placed on the cars of people attending church.
It was time, Canon Galligan wrote, ‘to de-escalate some of the hostile interaction from structures associated with the PTA and to stop the threats and ultimatums being issued’.
She added: ‘Some of the language and tactics being used to exert pressure on the board, individual board members and the patron [Archbishop Jackson] are abusive and completely inappropriate to any engagement or debate on the education of children.
‘For instance, putting anonymous, inflammatory, and most likely defamatory, leaflets on the windscreens of people attending a religious event in Greystones this week is just wrong and not a tactic that I believe most reasonable people in the school would support.’
She also wrote that she believed most of the mainstream coverage of the situation had been ‘fair and balanced’, but that ‘social media had been appalling at times’.
She said one local blog in particular had been ‘disgraceful and engaged in vitriolic and biased coverage which at times has bordered on incitement to hatred against a minority community in the town’.
For the moment, admissions to St Patrick’s have been suspended. On the school’s web homepage, a message has been posted explaining how Education Minister Richard Bruton started the Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018 in early October. And so, until a review of their admissions policy, taking into the account the new legislation, is finished, the admissions process is on hold.
Parents who have enquired about sending their children to the school next year received enrolment forms by email yesterday and were told the new enrolment policy will be available to review on the school website from Monday.
Where things go for St Patrick’s is anybody’s guess. There’s no doubt tempers are up again with the recent revelation that Rev Swann has been barred from taking part at services in the diocese.
‘It’s just so frustrating because people are getting the impression that we’re a community in disarray, when in fact more young families than ever are involved in the Church here,’ says one local and regular CoI service goer. ‘And it feels like David Mungavin is taking a lot of the flak for what’s been happening, when all he really wants is people to get more involved in their church.
‘He’s doing a really good job, it was very hard to come into a fishbowl like Greystones and take over from someone like Edgar, who was vicar for over 30 years and is still extremely popular.’
‘I don’t know where it’s going to go,’ sighs another parent. ‘Eileen Jackson left at the beginning of November and we have a stand-in principal at the moment. We’ve been told a new one has been assigned to us but we don’t know when they are starting.
‘It’s a horrible feeling and there has been the worst atmosphere at the school, where the teachers are trying to put on a brave face. I feel so bad for them.
‘Some of the meetings were so angry, there were teachers standing at the back walls, crying with the stress and awfulness of it all. They’ve been told to keep their heads down and get on with their work. But they loved Ms Jackson, it’s so sad.
‘The parents are split, definitely. Everyone tries to be civil, but... there are some parents who believe the BoM are right. But as far as I can see, they don’t care what the parents say or think, they have a completely different agenda.
‘Honestly, the way I feel at the moment, the quicker my kids are finished there, the better.’