Thursday January 13, a day of strike is organized by the primary and secondary unions of National Education. Justine, school principal, “tired, tired and angry” will be in the street, she explains to us why.
While the SNUipp, the main primary trade union, estimates the number of strikers at 75% on Thursday, January 13 in schools, testimony from Justine *, 57, a school principal in a town of just over 8,000 inhabitants, in the mining basin.
If she does not think that it is the year too many, Justine, who nevertheless had the possibility to stop her work and to retire last June, will go to demonstrate in Lille on Thursday.
She believes today that she cannot “absoutely“no longer fulfill its role: lead a teaching team and manage its elementary school with 17 classes, 420 students and around 20 teachers.
“I am unionized but I am rarely on strike”, she specifies. But there, the director says to herself “bored, tired” … “In December, all the indicators were red concerning the Covid-19, but we had the health protocol the day before the start of the January, by the media. is in the third version of this protocol since the start of the school year! “
Concretely, Tuesday January 4, Justine remembers having spent her day calling the parents of students in a class where there was a positive case. To explain to them that they had to come without delay to pick up their child, have it tested via a PCR the same day, then perform self-tests on D + 2 and D + 4 and complete a sworn certificate to ensure that these self-tests were negative.
“Imagine, working parents … If most of the time we are understood, there are times when, inevitably, anger is expressed! Especially since the protocol changes: Monday, we had a case of Covid-19 in a class, the time to set up the second version of the health protocol that we passed to a third version with the announcements of Jean Castex, at the JT of France 2. Suddenly, the parents ask from when all this applies, the Covid cell in the rectory is lost … We pass for puppets! “.
And again, Justine considers herself lucky to be unloaded, that is to say that she has no class of students. Nevertheless, she confides a “exhaustion” and an “anger“shared by many colleagues.
If she cried in 2019 after being physically assaulted by a parent of a student, at the time, she had not felt as “depressed, disappointed” as she does today. She will demonstrate Thursday in Lille, a city close to her town of residence.
* Loan first name