The result of the ASTI ballot, released yesterday, may provide some good news for parents. Yes, the union voted narrowly to support a ban on supervision and substitution cover.
But with the union in some disarray, the prospects of further action, which could seriously disrupt schools, looks increasingly remote. How can you impose a ban on supervision against the wishes of 45 per cent of members and, perhaps, thousands who did not bother to vote?
The result provides no clear mandate for more school closures. Some 45 per cent of members defied their union and only about 53 per cent of members voted - scarcely a ringing endorsement of the strategy worked out by radicals in the Central Executive Committee.
Even before this, the focus was on the union's decision not to allow its 17,000 members to vote on the offer of £27 an hour for supervision and substitution. This decision has drawn a ferocious response from the grassroots. The executive instead advised members to withdraw from these duties. The main business - the Government's actual offer to provide a pay structure for these services - was not put to members.
ASTI is the only teaching union reluctant to ballot members on the supervision package. The Teachers' Union of Ireland is conducting a postal ballot of members. Yesterday, the Irish National Teachers' Organisation put the offer to a ballot of members.
Senator Joe O'Toole, general secretary of the INTO, said it was the best offer available in current circumstances. Other issues, such as the pensionability of the £27 an hour - worth a total of £1,000 a year - could be addressed at another time.
It all seems a plausible strategy, so why did the ASTI not adopt it?
The issue of supervision and substitution for no payment has been a long running sore in Irish education. The ASTI pay campaign did, at least, highlight this madness. A deal on supervision was hammered out between the three teaching unions, school managers and the Department of Education last month. The nine negotiators from the teaching unions were convinced the deal would sail through.
But there was one factor all sides overlooked - unfinished business from the ASTI's disastrous pay campaign. Emotions have been running high. Votes of no-confidence have been tabled in the leadership. The divisions and bitterness which have long been a feature of the ASTI have become more intense.
When the ASTI executive met two weeks ago , only about 146 of the 180 members were present. Things quickly escalated out of control.
Rather than discussing the supervision offer, a minority began to demand a proper debate on the pay debacle. There was chanting and name-calling. It was, said one member, an "expression of pent-up anger. We had been led to the promised land of a 30 per cent pay rise - but we were now dejected and defeated. Something had to give".
With emotions rising, the tide began to turn against the supervision deal. A vote for the offer by members would clearly represent the death knell for the pay campaign, and this was too much for a majority of executive committee members. The meeting voted by 76 to 70 not to ballot.
The union is riven as never before. It must also counter public anger that it is dismissing £27 an hour when the economy is tipping into recession.
Even now, some of the hard-liners believe they can win, that more militancy in the run-in to an election is the answer.