Principal availablity during summer

Do you mean at set times or all times ?

As a BOM member, I've seen principals working through most of the summer supervising building works and interviewing staff.

No…maybe the last week in August

Big Bucks? You must be joking 2011abc.

Just over 100k for managing 50+ staff , I know people in industry managing 10 people who earn way more than that.

Responsibility for hundreds of pupils,

Then answerable to all the parents, bom , trustees, constantly threatened with legal cases!

I don't know any other job that pays so poorly for such a top management position.

To be fair they're not wrong. If I'm on holiday from my job, I'm not contactable to people from a work perspective. Why would I assume others would be?

I know with our primary school they've said that emails will be picked up sporadically during the first 2 weeks of August with someone being available in the office during mornings from then until the first day of school. But why would you need to be contacting the principal prior to the starting back of school?

They're not wrong in their response. Do you expect to be contactable when off duty from work.

Look agree or disagree with the idea of it, but principals have the entire summer off. While they may have some in service days that they have to do, they aren't under any obligation to actually work until the first day back at school. Most will do some so as not to have to deal with a mountain of admin on their return. I'm the daughter of a principal so I do know this & have seen it at home. My dad would have done work for about a week after the school closure in June & then would be back maybe the week before opening in September.

To staff yes, they are by default, to parents, not really, no.

Leave a msg and if it is actually important they'll get back to you.

You're very welcome

If they do, its a disgrace. They're running the school. They're management, not teaching staff. Surely there's a mountain of prep work before the start of any school year?

I would say it's reasonable to expect the principal to be contactable by parents in the days leading up to the new school term. Outside of the first and last week of the holidays I'd expect a slow response, or no response at all, depending on what the contact relates to.

My other half is a primary school teacher. If she had something urgent I know she could contact her principal at any time, anything not urgent can wait. They're generally back a few days before the kids anyway, depending on how it falls.

Holidays are Holidays, do you break from your holidays early to go back to prep for work, I doubt it, I'm sure some principles do but they don't have to if it's their approved holiday time.

What mountain of prep work? If it's secondary & you mean scheduling the classes. A lot will have done a prelim schedule while the exams were on in the school so it just needs refining before everyone comes back. For primary, teachers are allocated to classes long before the summer break so that's done. And even if there was prep work, it doesn't mean that they need to be contactable by the parents. Staff maybe but not parents.

It's the nature of teaching. They are holidays. Same as other jobs. And who says not being available to parents during the summer isn't making an effort. Put it like this - the business I work in, some of the branches close for 2.5 weeks over Christmas. This it outside any annual leave of the staff. The branch manager is not expected to be contactable by customers during that time period or do any work. Because the business is closed. As is the school during the summer. Like it or not, that is the nature of teaching.

Typical principal? Secondary or primary? In relation to the salary of €100,000…

No they don't. Where did your understanding of that come from? I mean yes a principal would have extra work than a normal teacher but they also, generally, have time during the school year to complete that too. I'm just curious to know why people think that someone would suddenly go from having the summer off (well apart from in-service days) as a teacher to not having that time off as a principal. Why would someone want to be a principal to have less time off than before?

Like I said, my dad was a primary school principal. He would go in for about a week after the school closed at the start of the summer & about a week before it reopened. If something came up during the summer to do with staff or the school building, he'd deal with that but otherwise he was off.

Did your Dad ever interview for new teachers?

Contact the school anyway. School secretary or porter will know when Principal is due in. They're not obliged to be there during holidays but there's so much work in running a school I'm sure they'll have a presence there at some stage.

I know of schools that are still trying to fill teacher roles. My deputy head friend is interviewing this week - she mentioned 10 roles to fill. In the past all this would be wrapped up by the end of the school year but not anymore.

Also last year my 4th class primary school child returned to school in September and had no new teacher in place until October!

What kind of a CEO

So if you're a principal let's say up the Eiffel tower and you get a call from Mrs Murphy about changing her son's teacher.. would you take the call and give her the 40 minutes she wants?

AS for all the teacher bashers on this thread, a bit of word substitution in the Snake Island exchange would work wonders

Russian warship: "Snake Island, I, Russian warship, repeat the offer: put down your arms and surrender, or you will be bombed. Have you understood me? Do you copy?"

Ukrainian 1 to Ukrainian 2: "That's it, then. Or, do we need to f**k them back off?"

Ukrainian 2 to Ukrainian 1: "Might as well."

Ukrainian 1: "Russian warship, go f**k yourself."

In theory CEOs are available during their holidays.

In practice nobody in the management team will be brave enough to make the call 😊

Tbf you said at times in the op as in more than one occasion.

If you've a genuine reasonable query I'm sure an email to the school secretary would have most likely garnered some sort of a response.

This was more or less pointed out to ya earlier in the thread.

Expecting availability however isn't reasonable.

You've the last week in August all the way till next June for expecting availability.