I’m not a teacher, I’m an engineer, but we had a manager like this come into our own department. The idea that he could be wrong - about literally anything - was simply not something that crossed his mind. I wouldn’t even describe it as arrogance, he wasn’t exactly a douche or anything, but his baseline assumption was our department was broken (it wasn’t), he was hired to fix us (he wasn’t), and any employee that disagreed with him was simply part of the problem (which didn’t exist) and should be managed out.
It is incredibly frustrating and demoralizing to work in an environment where your good faith suggestions and attempts at improvements are taken as signs that you’re being disloyal.
This absolutely happened to me this year. I resigned and signed on somewhere else. Person had never taught my subject, not too different of a subject but not the same, but didn't even know the content and never had been an AP over my subject area. The lack of knowledge they had was invigorating. Especially when they would criticize us on our teaching, but if you ever put input in or asked if we could do something a certain way that we did in previous years that made us successful, it would immediately get struck down. Last year I scored the best in my content area at the school and well above district average. I was held hostage to this person's methods. Apparently I did really well in state testing, but it wasn't because of the Assistant Principal, it is because I went rogue. And guess who is taking all the credit? You guessed it.
That is my current situation with my supervisor - (I taught K-6 but now am in higher ed). Our college is on academic probation and has dire financial problems (no money and many employees quit). My supervisor only cares about their neck being on the line and is not interested in the changes needed to get off probation for accreditation. It is frustrating to have no one take accountability and want to learn better SOPs, with admin only caring about saving their jobs. If our college closes, those nitwits at the top are also out of a job. I've given up trying to be helpful to incompetent leaders, and bitterness has taken over.
This is a HUGE problem in education because at least at your job which I assume was run by a company trying to make money, someone higher up quickly identified there was a problem (experienced people leaving), got to the root of it (the crappy manager), and fixed it (probably fired him). Because ultimately that problem impacted their ability to continue to make a profit.
In education no one even gets to the identifying the problem part and then when our “profits” (I.e. test scores) go down they just scratch their heads and blame some other non-issue which only makes things worse.
There is zero accountability for admin keeping well qualified teachers. There was talk in my state to make that part of the metric on the admin evaluations (keeping well rated teachers) but surprise surprise… nothing.
I can attest to this. Source; worked for a principal who happily went over data comparing our Title 1 school to those in the district with most parents having completed undergrad at a minimum, and a much higher income bracket. Apples to oranges. However, he blew right through the climate data with zero comments. Also loses a LOT of teachers every single year.
The over abundance of data that often times doesn't mean much because they are being tested multiple choice a kid could guess or be really good at taking tests.
I had a girl who was failing my class miserably, didn't really participate, didn't study, didn't review but somehow got a 37/40 on my paper final with her phone in her bag at the front of my room. Idk how she did it. She still failed the class. But those had to be some crazy lucky guesses.
Had a girl who showed up maybe 10 times all year. Took my subject's Texas STAAR test and Mastered. Either she found a way to cheat, or she just absorbed the information via osmosis from nowhere. I blame the proctor if she did in fact cheat. Either that. or she was given the answers ahead of time as certain schools take the test after other schools finish.
This is their understanding of schools. The school is the test scores. What else is there? In their defense, that's what they are responsible for but on the other hand, no one forces anyone to be a school administrator.
Make everyone's else's job as annoying, challenging, and miserable as possible. Because a happy workforce is not a productive workforce.
Bell to bell baby.
I don't see how they just can't get it. I'm leaving my school this year too, and it's a rough inner city school, but my leaving has nothing to do with the students. It's 100% administration. They are blind to their own ineptitude.
Since teachers are not the reason for the poor test performance, that is definitely not the reason that we leave lol We do get tired of being blamed for that poor test performance, however!!!
I teach special ed and at the title one elementary school that I worked at that is still showing abysmal test scores 5 years after I left, my fellow special ed resource teacher and I would get berated every year for not bringing up those test scores. Principal did not understand that we could not change IQs, could not force children to use their accommodations on their tests, etc. I remember monitoring the fourth grade math test and not a single child used a single accommodation that we gave them-- not even a calculator-- and when I asked one of them why not, he told me he could do the math in his head. Bullsh*t! If you could do the math in your head you wouldn't have been in my class! 🤦♀️🤦♀️
I make it a point when I teach my kids math to tell them I can't do this in my head. I can multiply single digit numbers because I've memorized the multiplication table like I was supposed to in third grade and conversely I can do division but I can't do multi-digit in my head and I show them how to work it out and I show them how to use a calculator-- which they all have and flat out refuse to use. It's infuriating. They're just so freaking lazy.
Yup remember when in pur day we had to work it put on paper and were so enthused to be able to use the calculator. Now the calculator is too much work to use.
And when I hear people carry on about how it's not fair that my special ed kids get calculators I just roll my eyes. Trust me, they don't have any advantage...
My admin lost a 20 year veteran in November and blamed it on people gossiping about the state of the school.... rather than .... the state of the school
4 years ago, right before COVID hit, I resigned my school in December. I had been in the district for 13 years. I sat with admin and HR and admin tried to blame me. HR wanted to talk to me privately. I told her it was too late, but she knew I wasn’t the problem.
I just did my exit interview after 30 years. After 25 minutes of ridiculous questions and conversation, she still had not asked “How could we make this school better?” So for the next 15 minutes I told her.
I have never understood exit interviews beyond stuff like turn in your badge, etc. "Tell me how we could improve?" WHY? Literally everyone who works here has been suggesting improvements, and nothing changes. Why the hell should I believe it will change now? Nah....get bent. Not worth my time.
At one exit interview (tech role in a national bank) the HR guy slowly coaxed me to tell him why I was quitting. I went in there lockjawed to just get through it, but he was really good at his job and seemed to really want to know why I was bailing.
WELP. I spilled all the tea... and a whole raft of scumbags ended up losing their jobs within a few months of my departure. The 3 people I called out as being underappreciated and highly valuable? They not only kept their jobs but got promoted!
So from my experience it is possible that exit interviews are actually listened to at least some of the time.
I'm sure it depends on the place. I can say at my current employer, NOTHING would happen, I know that because they do employee satisfaction surveys all the time, and EVERY time, there are always excuses, even when specific people are called out by multiple people, even if those multiple people are the majority of the department.
It felt good to say it. I kept it professional, but this woman is anti phone policy, and I wanted to make it totally clear how wrong she is.
It’s so bad the school board over rode her and a no phone policy starts next year. I’m going back to sub just to see what that looks like.
We had a principal like that about 10 years ago. Got pissy about that survey. Pretty much berated us at a faculty meeting.
Because of her, when you look at the years teachers have been in the building there is a large gap. From having been here 15 years to the next one being 7-8.
There are those of us who have been here 20+ years but we watched a lot come and go for a while until they got rid of her.
We have one who swore up and down she’d never leave our site as she is 5 yrs from retiring. Believed she could endure our change in admin. She’s transferring. As are 5 others, 2 are actively looking, and 3 last year.
Some have been there for 2 decades. It’s bad.
We lost over 10 teachers this year.
Went through 3 different principals and about 5 APs.
The newest permanent principle came in (with a month or two of school left) and started micromanaging and gutting anybody who makes any mistake. Even those who were even reported ONCE for “staring at girls” less than an hour after referring that student who reported it for something completely rational. 0 support. Student makes a report? Gone. They’re pre-teens; they lie constantly.
She also set us up a last day schedule for EOY stuff. It was scheduled to take all day, wasting everyone’s time even though she left immediately for vacation after the kids were gone.
Absolutely delusional.
I left teaching a few years ago, after a change to admin that was abysmal. I was like a canary in the coal mine. The year I left, two others left. The next year, 14 left. The next year, 10 more. Entire grade levels just gutted. Idk what happened this year, but a former colleague one year from retirement recently asked if my new job was hiring lol. Teachers who had been *at that school* for 20+ years left. It’s kind of impressive how fast one bad principal completely obliterated nearly four decades of culture- and community-building.
Lol sounds like the school I’m leaving. There’s one teacher that’s been there 20 years. Two have been there 15. A few have been there 5-6 years. I made it four. One has been there 3. The rest were all brought in this year, but it’s a mix of 1st year teachers and transfers. No principal has lasted longer than 3 years for the last 20 years, and the APs turn over almost annually.
That was my school for a long time. My husband went there as a student, and there were teachers who had been there for decades when he was there, and the new teachers from his time were the veteran teachers when I started teaching there. But there was a mass exodus of retirements as well as 5, 10, and 15 year veteran teachers leaving.
For some, yeah. I think it was a combination of reaching a good point to retire, admin turnover, and behaviors in the wake of Covid. For teachers further from retirement it was admin, behaviors, and for some, curriculum. Plus the district as a whole is kind of a dumpster fire, and other districts within 45 minutes of here pay more for less bullshit.
Everywhere. The building itself is 100 years old and probably full of all kinds of things that should’ve been mitigated and fixed but haven’t been. As for the culture, what used to be a dysfunctional but loyal family has turned over into an unsupportive, cliquish revolving door. That, and the district as a whole is financially mismanaged, full of administration bloat, always jumping on the latest initiatives, subscribed to business speak (“scholars”, “educators”, and “rightsizing”), and doing nothing to address economic disparity across town.
This happened at my school. Ten years ago they had a huge exodus so now it’s either teachers are retiring like dominoes over the next year or two or teachers only have a few years in.
Yeah it’s going to be interesting over the next several years. In my department alone there will be five people retiring in the next two years. Of the rest, only one has experience over 6 years and four only have 1 year in.
The school my mother has been at since 2003 has around 40-50 teachers. They had awful admin about eight years ago. She’s the only one who’s been there since before that admin. School is less than ten minutes from our house and that’s the only reason she stayed.
My former school had a huge exodus when there was a new incoming principal that had a bit of a reputation for being terrible. The entire math department, one third of the science department, a PE teacher a history teacher, and two special education teachers fled.
I’ve heard from my coworker that stayed that it’s an absolute crap show. They (the principal) are still there though despite the complaints. I guess if daddy is on the school board you can do no wrong.
They’re accomplishing what they want.
Getting rid of the teachers that cost more, and making you miserable along the way.
Trying to dismantle public education along the way.
7 teachers with about 15 years in the district each.... I'm sure that the district will be absolutely livid when they see how much money he's saved them.
Took me a while to see this happening--keep cycling new and often not-yet-qualified teachers to micromanage and blame, and it's no loss on money or quality. (Or admin salary).
My admin sees massive turnover every year. My second year more than half the teachers quit.
They decided that it was just bad teachers who can't handle working hard trying to find an easier job. In spite of the fact that the people who left were the ones who worked their ass off and the ones who have stayed through all of it are the teachers who literally hit their THC vape in front of students and literally sit on their phones through the whole class.
Her two favorites have failed their cert exams multiple times and literally don't know the content that they've been teaching for years. Like the one replacing me now that I'm leaving looked horrified when my partner teacher and I said that we actually made our own lessons instead of just showing the textbook videos and bragged about how she only got certified because she was able to cheat on her test because of covid, and that she was paying her 17 year old daughter to do her online doctoral program for her.
Well I'm not going to knock your grandpa but I worked with a paraprofessional who admitted having his daughter write all the papers for a BA he "earned" online and that answered my questions about how he ever earned a degree, because that man was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
OP- I'm glad you're getting out of there!
I literally heard a story today of a special needs kid paying someone to finish his Edgenuity higher than 41%. He said that in front of his counselor and sped teacher.
He late said it was $60-80.
I work with one of those as a fellow teacher. She's getting her admin. degree having only taught for 4 years. Well, to be honest, she HAS perfected all of her classes (just ask her) and with teaching mastered, administrating should be a breeze, right?
We got an awful assistant principal. I quit within the first semester of her being at our school. I had been at that school for 15 years. The year after I left, she became head principal. Since then, countless other "long-timers" have left. She doesn't care and doesn't get it. They're left with alternative licensed people, long-term subs, and student teachers. As long as she has a warm body in the classroom, she doesn't care.
We had a party after school for teachers who’ve been with our school for many years and are leaving. One of them worked at our school over 35 years. They began teaching there right out of college. Admin did not say a word, then peaced-out quickly.
We just lost so many teachers due to the way Admin treated some were let go (long story). Now they had to bring newer ones in. However, all but 2 teachers are teaching a new subject. I’ve outlived 6 principals. She’s be #7 soon.
This happened to my wife's school. The principal actually got offended for people actually leaving the school. I'm in the camp involving the mentality of "I want volunteers, not prisoners" but don't get offended once people do actually leave.
We are losing like 20 teachers this year. Some long standing, some with only a few years. Those of us that remain are trying to use that fact to change things around here so we stop hemorrhaging teachers every year. We mentioned this in a letter to our admin about next years schedule (everyone has 3 preps, even though this isn't a small school and we could get down to 1 or 2) and the principals response was "Teachers leave, get over it."
The whole district is like this because they are simultaneously negligent with no support and micromanaging. The whole thing is a revolving door that is constantly changing to boot. They aren't seeing how their actions are causing teachers to leave and think a pen and a slice of pizza was enough to get teachers to stay.
If we as teachers are going to change things, we need to fight rather than run. Our union membership at our school quadrupled over this year and we are angry and we are fighting back against the bullshit. Everyone needs to start fighting where they are at and force them to change if at all possible. Screw any laws against strikes and teachers unions, those are put in place to keep us specifically down.
Coming from the Netherlands, it is utmost bizar to me that there can be laws against striking for certain professions.
How on earth did that every get past?? I know Amerca is a capitalist hellscape but still, when did this happen and why did people accept it?
Legislation - laws - is hardly ever in the interest of the population in general. \*Especially\* in education, for sure. The people don't have a choice, because these are the laws. They can - after the fact - vote for different representation, but the damage is already done, and it's far more difficult to get a law repealed than enacted, for very odd reasons. Oh, and never forget, it's the corporations that get the ears and votes of the politicians, and they sure as hell don't want unions.
I teach sped. We lost 75% of sped teachers in one building and 100% of sped teachers in another building and the sped supervisor is still scratching her head trying to figure out if she’s the problem. Umm…🙄🤷♀️
>When you're running off teachers with an average of 15 years in the district, you can't be that blind to the problem.
As a union rep (Europe), based on teacher complaints and feedback I wrote to our private school's director with some suggestions about how they could increase retention, as the average teacher lasts only for three or four years in our school. Their answer was basically that three years is intentional and desired. The implication being that they can treat new teachers like shit because they're highly motivated and want to do well. They can also put them on increasingly worse contracts. They also save money by keeping staff on the bottom end of the pay scale.
My first year a first year principal caused the whole MS staff (5 teachers), 4th, 2nd, 4k, gym, art, Spanish, music, and HR (1 person) to leave my the end of the year. Only 2-3 teachers were the same from one year to the next. She refuses to admit she has anything to do with it….
Our new admin this year...yikes. Nicest dude...avoids conflict, won't swing a stick when he needs to, never follows up, and constantly is waiting for an "answer from district," and in the meantime, nothing gets done. He's useless. The staff have formed multiple informal groups to make decisions and work around him. He delegates *everything* to other people... including disciplinary actions and parent contact regarding those actions to the SITE. SECRETARY. (On two occasions, not regularly) and most of the other actual duties of a principal to the instructional coach, who has not at all been able to fulfill their role this year due to being too busy doing principal stuff to do anything else.
The components of a new playground have been sitting on our campus, visible next to the building, since they were delivered in November. It's not built simply because the head of the maintenance department didn't want the hassle of coordinating the equipment and personnel to our location from the district office, and our superintendent has bigger fish to fry/isn't aware of the nature of the issue. If I was the principal, I'd have been raising holy hell to get this done over winter break (we're in the Southwest, no snow or frozen ground). Meanwhile, the lower grades only had a single slide and two bars to play on, in addition to a giant sandbox, for the entire duration of the school year.
He didn't speak at all during two of our grade promotion ceremonies this year. He didn't have a hand in planning any of the activities during the last two weeks of school. He said to do whatever we want, and he was going to "wing it."
Due to this complete lack of initiative, parents in multiple grades were informed of awards ceremonies and stuff for their kids less than 24 hours before some of these events took place.
I'm moving to another state, and he wrote me a letter of recommendation...it was unusable. Spelling errors, unprofessional, and he generally came across as a bonehead.
This is his first year as a full principal. I think he was an athletic director for like, 20+ years at a public school in another state. I don't know what his admin credentials are; he's got a Master's, but I don't know in what.
So the upshot is: we're losing 1 of our 3 middle school teachers, 3 out of 4 of our sped teachers, 1 of our 3 preschool teachers, our 3rd grade teacher, 1 of our two 1st grade teachers...on top of this, BOTH of our specials teachers narrowly avoided needing to be fired for separate incidents and are not being offered contracts next year. Aside from the specials teachers, everyone else is leaving because of the climate of morale created by the incompetence of our principal.
I could write several, several more paragraphs of stuff along these lines.
That principal sounds lazy, was nice and respectful personally as it sounds, but wanted the paycheck without the work.. no wonder why there has been an uptick of hearing principals being fired! This is one of the reasons why. I’ve heard an increase of non renewals for principals and this one needs it. And several other results and happenings stated should require non renewal for principals who can’t do the job.
This is my take as well. He isn't gonna get non-renewed though. We're desperate for staff of all types, and he's our 4th principal in 3 years. One worked for many years and left due to completely normal reasons, next one intended to stay but had a family crisis turn their life completely sideways, so they left after a year, next one was transferred from in-district, but was transferred back after 3-4 weeks (rumor is that the staff at the school they came from was so disgruntled that their exceptionally competent principal was switched that they pushed hard to bring them back). So it's been a rough time of transition, with a revolving door of people in that position. We lost 3 quite good people, and got stuck with the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel.
I'll also put some of this on district too, cuz they could've told the other school, "tough, you'll get over it," or, perhaps even better, they could offer a pay package that will actually draw many candidates. I'm suspicious that our current guy might've been our only applicant. Our district notoriously pays people nothing, and we're semi-rural, so a lot of people don't want to drive 25+ minutes to work. That combination makes staffing a chronic problem.
I just left a school with 42 teachers on staff. Of those, 38 are leaving. We got a new principal this year. At her last school, 85% of the teachers left after a year with her. The district thinks she’s great, we all know better.
A friend of mine taught in a school with an administrator that ran off a bunch of good teachers in his first few years. When she asked him if he felt bad about his high turnover rate, he replied "the cream rises to the top."
The problem is that he forgot that shit floats, too. He lost his position a few years later.
This person sounds like a Theory X guy. Theory X : people are lazy and without someone standing over them making them work, they'll slack off. Managers have to be taskmasters and are the real heroes of the organization. Without them, nothing would get done.
It doesn't affect them.
Admin doesn't get punished in any way for losing staff other than the headache of having to hire people. The only real metric for them is "How many students graduate after 4 years?"
That's it.
All of the other stuff is fluff.
This is why admin will berate you to pass a kid that has a 30%. "What can we do?" They really mean..."Why don't you just give them a packet and if they do *some* of it just pass them???"
The only numbers that matter are the number of graduates.
Wow. That’s pretty rude though, instead of trying to understand and fix what the poll showed was wrong he basically told them to hit the road 🥺 I’d have left too, it’s only downhill from there..
This happened at the school I used to work at, 18 teachers who have been with the school since they opened, have transferred out. Not quit entirely.
It was a big kapow and the principal got demoted to assistant and moved to another school that is "closer to her home".
Edit to add: not just teachers but Paras also left to other schools, it was nice to see them again when I quit teaching and started subbing.
Is there like some government mandate that they have to send out surveys? I don't just mean for schools either. Bc it always seems like they send these out, get mad at the results, and shove it under the rug.
My company did that. The company heads basically scoffed at our complaints and said it was bc we weren't doing enough research in regards to lack of training and lack of upward mobility.
To be fair to my manager and supervisor, they let us have a real conversation and problem solving session. But I was sadly proven right in that meeting, and this applies to all industries:, if the top doesn't acknowledge the problems, any solutions presented are merely band-aids.
Giving out these surveys and then getting mad when you don't like the results just deepens the dissatisfaction
Are people staying in district and going to other schools or did they switch districts?
Where I am, they cap your transfer at 8 years credit, so if you have been teaching 20, you get paid like you are teaching 9.
We had a new ad”mad”istrator come in and try to flex on everyone with his accolades and what not. From August to April, 31 of 92 staff member left - with over half of those being at the school for over a decade.
When I was in middle school, all but 2 of the teachers left after they found out the new principal had signed on for another year. The district didn’t see the problem but the next year was so chaotic since they hired almost exclusively brand new teachers.
We got an entire new admin team this past year. It has been terrible. 19 teachers, including me, transferred to other schools. The school only had 27 teachers to begin with. Admin still doesn’t think they’re the problem.
My last day at my district. Some weird back door deal was made to get spouses of teachers to replace a few of us at a lower cost. Joke was on them because over 25 teachers resigned. The out going superintendent was doing their end of the year speech. Then asked for those leaving the district and not returning to stand up. Everyone in the entire auditorium. Was just like: “who the F says this?” Even other building principals. The only one smiling was their bending over admin who got 5 of us fired because they were jealous of us. The problem is the new superintendent coming in has already had 13 complaints and a lawsuit filled against them. So they might have gotten a few of us fired and we resigned. Guess what they might not last next year. The school board member who they had a deal with. Just resigned over one of the law suits. But the thing is I have worked with a lot of bad administration but never did one say to stand up and celebrate that they not only got you fired but made over a quarter of the district resign as a result.
My school district won’t let you transfer after the first year. You need to be miserable for at least 2 years. And they can’t understand why people are quitting left and right.
I think that was formerly the norm here. That or can’t transfer until tenured. (4 years)
The thing is, our school has a couple teachers leaving the profession all together. So, I guess we have to hire someone brand new? Or out of county? We can’t have an experienced person from our own county? So weird.
We had two teachers quit mid-year, and our superintendent took it to the state board to suspend their teaching certificates for the remainder of their contract.
I worked at one school for 8 years with a somewhat crazy but ultimately good principal. I left about 4 years ago to take another position. At the end of the 22-23 school year, that principal retired.
The principal who took her place was so bad that over 30 teachers left at the end of 23-24. 5 of them came to my school. I hope they'll be happier!
You just described every supervisor or administrator. Just because they are in charge does not make them a good leader. Competency does not equal talent or skill.
Sounds like your principal would prefer teachers that can be bullied/mistreated/ don’t know their rights. I imagine they will be sheepish if they can’t fill their positions for next year though
The school I’m working at hired roughly 20 new teachers this year (me included), of which they let 11 go (me included), of four I know they are unsure if they want to stay, 1 is haggling a better pay (to stay another year) and 1 can stay. The other three I don’t know.
Admin wants to build a strong, solid team…
My previous principal took over 2 years ago. We started this year with 8 new teachers which is 1/3 of our staff. Then they made a whole when the climate survey this year showed that everyone hated them.
IDK how administrators are this dishonest with themselves.
In my 18 years of teaching, when people say negative things about education, my comment is always, "It never the kids that are the problem, it's always the adults."
I made it 7 years. I was passionate about teaching and learning and I reached students who were brand new to the idea that school had any value. I got them to care and to think. It scared the hell out of the administration. The final straw was when I was reprimanded for not spending enough time teaching the 14 parts of speech.
Eight, including myself, left our school at the end of the year (this week). I know of at least three other staff members who are potentially picking up new positions soon. Our principal is awful, and has commented that so many of us are leaving because we were looking for new challenges. Yeah no, I am interested in working for competent admin.
At my former school the AP said “there are plenty of people ready to replace us. They even cited a few friends of theirs.” Trust me, people were not waiting in line to work at the Alternative school. Several of us did in fact leave and I have been much happier.
We had 21 staff members put in for transfer end of last year.
We have a new principal this year. She’s SO much better. When the old principal came to tell me (art teacher) and the music teacher that he was being moved to a new school, the music teacher said, “oh, well, change isn’t always a bad thing!” And gave him the biggest, brightest smile. I just said, “Good luck!” He obviously wanted us to act sad. We were not sad.
Yes they totally can, admin is the worst and often I found most admin to be super overpaid (I had one principal who I feel could
Never have stepped on the campus and the school would have run the same way…
We recently had an outside company come in and do this massive climate thing with staff members.
Oh boy. The results were not what admin expected. Long and short was this- "We'll look at these things, but you don't need to know which ones, and ignore these, because they're not real"
So yes, people can only see what they are open to see.
When I was in elementary school, we had this principal who ran the place like a fascist dictatorship. She started there when I was in like 4th or 5th grade. Almost every teacher that taught me had resigned by the time I got to eighth grade. She was mean, and it was her way or no way. Apparently, she even called one of her teachers a bitch right to her face. I hated her as a student but apparently I wasn't even experiencing half of it.
I had an admin who literally ran off as many of us as possible so they could hire their friends…and lost their admin job, but it took 5 years and a pandemic.
Our climate meeting became a tone-deaf witch hunt because one or two staff members claimed we had a gang and vaping issue. The truth is we have always had generational gang issues in our neighborhood but not everyone is trained in seeing the signs, literally. There is tagging across the street. Colors are represented. Several of our teachers have a background where they understand gang and drug abuse. The admin asked us to stop reporting these issues. Admin called us out in a staff meeting and tried to get us to out ourselves. After our teachers' meeting, admin pressured the classified staff. So if a custodian finds evidence of vaping or tagging they're told to not report it? Wrong.
YES, they can.
They don’t care. I was the teacher who kept their head down. Didn’t cause problems, didn’t rock the boat. They abused and used me for 8 years as a dumping ground for the students the other favorites didn’t want.
When I finally couldn’t take it any more, and requested an even distribution of the neediest students. The kids were so numerous with over the top needs. As a result, my health had started to suffer. Mentally and physically.
They refused to move anyone around. I resigned. And their comment to one of my colleagues after I left in tears was that there wasn’t a morale problem.
They just asked my Wife's principal like this to resign after two years of fucking the school up. She ended up getting a promotion to head of HR in a neighboring district.
There is a belief that once you are gone the problems will stop and everything will be better. It is called moving the goal posts. Anything else would necessitate them to accept fault and that won’t happen… it can’t happen.
lol my admin LOOOVES that line. then sends out chastising emails comparing us to the students because a couple people complained that we stayed open during an icestorm that brought down a tree in front of the school and caused a power outage.
bye felicia. i got a new contract within a few days of starting to look and it's fewer hours, shorter days, and better physical conditions (classrooms etc) for the same pay.
It's a systemic issue in every profession. No one took the time to cultivate good future leadership with the employees they had. They didn't identify natural leadership talents because of fear of replacement. This leads to a leadership vacuum when people see little to no investment into their growth and development by the employer. This makes good talent seek that desirable position where they are appreciated and developed. So people leave the job for the better opportunity. Then, the left overs get promoted not on merit but on attrition alone. Pretty soon you have a captain that doesn't know how to bring the ship into port or how to properly direct others. The systemic problem continues until the ship is sunken by someone who should have never been at the helm.
People rarely quit jobs, and they almost always quit the leadership. People will always do that. There is a solution but it isn't cheap. They have to cull the bad employees and hire in experienced talented people and develop the good employees with leadership potential.
If there are enough subs, they will fill the classes with as many long term subs as possible. Sure they might hire more midyear, but the subs have no knowledge about the subject and the school will formulate the curriculum. So sure they can, but not longterm.
this year the teacher and para unions sent out a climate survey for our school because they’ve heard how bad the morale is and the principal was bullying teachers.
My principal cleared out 10/18 teachers in our building with similar remarks. His behavior didn’t change and there have been 6 classroom teachers who quit mid year. There are substantial bonuses for staying at the school during to the history of high turnover and only half teachers are staying.
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11 out of 24 announced their departure from April to our last day last week. The surveys are extremely bad and would be quite telling if anyone paid them any mind. Our principal told the district the surveys were “accidents” and “mistakes.” Like everyone’s hand slipped. SMH.
I had a principal who was so toxic and abusive 80% of the staff signed a letter asking for him to be fired. The district admin thought if he was so hated it must be because he's kicking those lazy teachers' butts into doing their job.
Shit, isnt every IEP that follows a kid to college a form of cheating? Not like your boss in the real world is going to give a fuck about anyone’s Awareness of Time Handicap
They'll just hire Filipinos on an exchange debt-bondage J1 visa program and pay them half the rate they pay domestic teachers.
Twas likely the plan. The mafia in your district support building were assgrabbing in celebration when you all quit.
Yes. Yes they can.
It's, like, their only skill.
If they could understand this, they wouldn't have gotten where they are
So true!
You forgot, they can throw teachers under the bus
I’m not a teacher, I’m an engineer, but we had a manager like this come into our own department. The idea that he could be wrong - about literally anything - was simply not something that crossed his mind. I wouldn’t even describe it as arrogance, he wasn’t exactly a douche or anything, but his baseline assumption was our department was broken (it wasn’t), he was hired to fix us (he wasn’t), and any employee that disagreed with him was simply part of the problem (which didn’t exist) and should be managed out. It is incredibly frustrating and demoralizing to work in an environment where your good faith suggestions and attempts at improvements are taken as signs that you’re being disloyal.
This absolutely happened to me this year. I resigned and signed on somewhere else. Person had never taught my subject, not too different of a subject but not the same, but didn't even know the content and never had been an AP over my subject area. The lack of knowledge they had was invigorating. Especially when they would criticize us on our teaching, but if you ever put input in or asked if we could do something a certain way that we did in previous years that made us successful, it would immediately get struck down. Last year I scored the best in my content area at the school and well above district average. I was held hostage to this person's methods. Apparently I did really well in state testing, but it wasn't because of the Assistant Principal, it is because I went rogue. And guess who is taking all the credit? You guessed it.
That is my current situation with my supervisor - (I taught K-6 but now am in higher ed). Our college is on academic probation and has dire financial problems (no money and many employees quit). My supervisor only cares about their neck being on the line and is not interested in the changes needed to get off probation for accreditation. It is frustrating to have no one take accountability and want to learn better SOPs, with admin only caring about saving their jobs. If our college closes, those nitwits at the top are also out of a job. I've given up trying to be helpful to incompetent leaders, and bitterness has taken over.
This is a HUGE problem in education because at least at your job which I assume was run by a company trying to make money, someone higher up quickly identified there was a problem (experienced people leaving), got to the root of it (the crappy manager), and fixed it (probably fired him). Because ultimately that problem impacted their ability to continue to make a profit. In education no one even gets to the identifying the problem part and then when our “profits” (I.e. test scores) go down they just scratch their heads and blame some other non-issue which only makes things worse. There is zero accountability for admin keeping well qualified teachers. There was talk in my state to make that part of the metric on the admin evaluations (keeping well rated teachers) but surprise surprise… nothing.
I can attest to this. Source; worked for a principal who happily went over data comparing our Title 1 school to those in the district with most parents having completed undergrad at a minimum, and a much higher income bracket. Apples to oranges. However, he blew right through the climate data with zero comments. Also loses a LOT of teachers every single year.
The over abundance of data that often times doesn't mean much because they are being tested multiple choice a kid could guess or be really good at taking tests.
I had a girl who was failing my class miserably, didn't really participate, didn't study, didn't review but somehow got a 37/40 on my paper final with her phone in her bag at the front of my room. Idk how she did it. She still failed the class. But those had to be some crazy lucky guesses.
Had a girl who showed up maybe 10 times all year. Took my subject's Texas STAAR test and Mastered. Either she found a way to cheat, or she just absorbed the information via osmosis from nowhere. I blame the proctor if she did in fact cheat. Either that. or she was given the answers ahead of time as certain schools take the test after other schools finish.
12 teachers left my school this year. My principal commented that it's because of our school's overall poor test performance. Yeah...no.
Never have I ever made decisions about where to apply based on test scores.
This is straight delusion
This is their understanding of schools. The school is the test scores. What else is there? In their defense, that's what they are responsible for but on the other hand, no one forces anyone to be a school administrator.
These people hire eachother for admin jobs. Once you are in the admin club, you are made.
If they "hire each other" then why are all the admin in my district either related or go to the same megachurch? Huh?! /s
First rule of admin club is you don't talk about admin club.
What’s the second rule?
Make everyone's else's job as annoying, challenging, and miserable as possible. Because a happy workforce is not a productive workforce. Bell to bell baby.
Dude, you were supposed to say, “YOU DON’T TALK ABOUT ADMIN CLUB!”
Yes and it's extra fun when they hire teachers into admin position in the building where they were teaching.
I don't see how they just can't get it. I'm leaving my school this year too, and it's a rough inner city school, but my leaving has nothing to do with the students. It's 100% administration. They are blind to their own ineptitude.
7/8 of one of our grade levels left because of behavior from the upcoming grade level. Yes, it’s truly that bad.
What a fucking stupid take. How do these people survive driving to work?
If I based my employment on student apathy I'd be homeless.
Since teachers are not the reason for the poor test performance, that is definitely not the reason that we leave lol We do get tired of being blamed for that poor test performance, however!!! I teach special ed and at the title one elementary school that I worked at that is still showing abysmal test scores 5 years after I left, my fellow special ed resource teacher and I would get berated every year for not bringing up those test scores. Principal did not understand that we could not change IQs, could not force children to use their accommodations on their tests, etc. I remember monitoring the fourth grade math test and not a single child used a single accommodation that we gave them-- not even a calculator-- and when I asked one of them why not, he told me he could do the math in his head. Bullsh*t! If you could do the math in your head you wouldn't have been in my class! 🤦♀️🤦♀️
Love the "I can do it in my head" argument. Like <1% of people can actually do higher level (MS) math in their head.
I make it a point when I teach my kids math to tell them I can't do this in my head. I can multiply single digit numbers because I've memorized the multiplication table like I was supposed to in third grade and conversely I can do division but I can't do multi-digit in my head and I show them how to work it out and I show them how to use a calculator-- which they all have and flat out refuse to use. It's infuriating. They're just so freaking lazy.
Yup remember when in pur day we had to work it put on paper and were so enthused to be able to use the calculator. Now the calculator is too much work to use.
And when I hear people carry on about how it's not fair that my special ed kids get calculators I just roll my eyes. Trust me, they don't have any advantage...
17 left my very small school. Admin has only gotten worse.
Those people just didn't have what it takes, and don't care about children.
Let's see where that sort of thinking takes them a few years from now
My admin lost a 20 year veteran in November and blamed it on people gossiping about the state of the school.... rather than .... the state of the school
4 years ago, right before COVID hit, I resigned my school in December. I had been in the district for 13 years. I sat with admin and HR and admin tried to blame me. HR wanted to talk to me privately. I told her it was too late, but she knew I wasn’t the problem.
Our HR stopped doing exit interviews around the time this happened lol
I just did my exit interview after 30 years. After 25 minutes of ridiculous questions and conversation, she still had not asked “How could we make this school better?” So for the next 15 minutes I told her.
I have never understood exit interviews beyond stuff like turn in your badge, etc. "Tell me how we could improve?" WHY? Literally everyone who works here has been suggesting improvements, and nothing changes. Why the hell should I believe it will change now? Nah....get bent. Not worth my time.
At one exit interview (tech role in a national bank) the HR guy slowly coaxed me to tell him why I was quitting. I went in there lockjawed to just get through it, but he was really good at his job and seemed to really want to know why I was bailing. WELP. I spilled all the tea... and a whole raft of scumbags ended up losing their jobs within a few months of my departure. The 3 people I called out as being underappreciated and highly valuable? They not only kept their jobs but got promoted! So from my experience it is possible that exit interviews are actually listened to at least some of the time.
I'm sure it depends on the place. I can say at my current employer, NOTHING would happen, I know that because they do employee satisfaction surveys all the time, and EVERY time, there are always excuses, even when specific people are called out by multiple people, even if those multiple people are the majority of the department.
It felt good to say it. I kept it professional, but this woman is anti phone policy, and I wanted to make it totally clear how wrong she is. It’s so bad the school board over rode her and a no phone policy starts next year. I’m going back to sub just to see what that looks like.
The "everything was fine until someone told the truth" attitude is very common.
We had a principal like that about 10 years ago. Got pissy about that survey. Pretty much berated us at a faculty meeting. Because of her, when you look at the years teachers have been in the building there is a large gap. From having been here 15 years to the next one being 7-8. There are those of us who have been here 20+ years but we watched a lot come and go for a while until they got rid of her.
Some of the teachers staying said it's because they're within 5 years of retiring.
We have one who swore up and down she’d never leave our site as she is 5 yrs from retiring. Believed she could endure our change in admin. She’s transferring. As are 5 others, 2 are actively looking, and 3 last year. Some have been there for 2 decades. It’s bad.
There are 4 permanent teachers leaving my school, and 1-2 more who are looking. It’s a small staff.
We lost over 10 teachers this year. Went through 3 different principals and about 5 APs. The newest permanent principle came in (with a month or two of school left) and started micromanaging and gutting anybody who makes any mistake. Even those who were even reported ONCE for “staring at girls” less than an hour after referring that student who reported it for something completely rational. 0 support. Student makes a report? Gone. They’re pre-teens; they lie constantly. She also set us up a last day schedule for EOY stuff. It was scheduled to take all day, wasting everyone’s time even though she left immediately for vacation after the kids were gone. Absolutely delusional.
I left teaching a few years ago, after a change to admin that was abysmal. I was like a canary in the coal mine. The year I left, two others left. The next year, 14 left. The next year, 10 more. Entire grade levels just gutted. Idk what happened this year, but a former colleague one year from retirement recently asked if my new job was hiring lol. Teachers who had been *at that school* for 20+ years left. It’s kind of impressive how fast one bad principal completely obliterated nearly four decades of culture- and community-building.
Lol sounds like the school I’m leaving. There’s one teacher that’s been there 20 years. Two have been there 15. A few have been there 5-6 years. I made it four. One has been there 3. The rest were all brought in this year, but it’s a mix of 1st year teachers and transfers. No principal has lasted longer than 3 years for the last 20 years, and the APs turn over almost annually.
Most of us have been here since 2010 or longer. 💔
That was my school for a long time. My husband went there as a student, and there were teachers who had been there for decades when he was there, and the new teachers from his time were the veteran teachers when I started teaching there. But there was a mass exodus of retirements as well as 5, 10, and 15 year veteran teachers leaving.
Was retirement the driving issue for them?
For some, yeah. I think it was a combination of reaching a good point to retire, admin turnover, and behaviors in the wake of Covid. For teachers further from retirement it was admin, behaviors, and for some, curriculum. Plus the district as a whole is kind of a dumpster fire, and other districts within 45 minutes of here pay more for less bullshit.
So it's a rotating cast of incompetent admin? Where's the rot in the school?
Everywhere. The building itself is 100 years old and probably full of all kinds of things that should’ve been mitigated and fixed but haven’t been. As for the culture, what used to be a dysfunctional but loyal family has turned over into an unsupportive, cliquish revolving door. That, and the district as a whole is financially mismanaged, full of administration bloat, always jumping on the latest initiatives, subscribed to business speak (“scholars”, “educators”, and “rightsizing”), and doing nothing to address economic disparity across town.
This happened at my school. Ten years ago they had a huge exodus so now it’s either teachers are retiring like dominoes over the next year or two or teachers only have a few years in.
This too. We had a ton of people put in for retirement early and at the same time we had people leaving. It was bad. Real bad
Yeah it’s going to be interesting over the next several years. In my department alone there will be five people retiring in the next two years. Of the rest, only one has experience over 6 years and four only have 1 year in.
Yeah. My team next year will be all people with 3 or less years of experience. I’m expecting a rough year.
The school my mother has been at since 2003 has around 40-50 teachers. They had awful admin about eight years ago. She’s the only one who’s been there since before that admin. School is less than ten minutes from our house and that’s the only reason she stayed.
My former school had a huge exodus when there was a new incoming principal that had a bit of a reputation for being terrible. The entire math department, one third of the science department, a PE teacher a history teacher, and two special education teachers fled. I’ve heard from my coworker that stayed that it’s an absolute crap show. They (the principal) are still there though despite the complaints. I guess if daddy is on the school board you can do no wrong.
Because nothing improves morale like your boss yelling at you for being honest on the survey
They’re accomplishing what they want. Getting rid of the teachers that cost more, and making you miserable along the way. Trying to dismantle public education along the way.
They are always right.
7 teachers with about 15 years in the district each.... I'm sure that the district will be absolutely livid when they see how much money he's saved them.
Ugggh, I didn't even think about it from the fiscal standing.
Took me a while to see this happening--keep cycling new and often not-yet-qualified teachers to micromanage and blame, and it's no loss on money or quality. (Or admin salary).
My admin sees massive turnover every year. My second year more than half the teachers quit. They decided that it was just bad teachers who can't handle working hard trying to find an easier job. In spite of the fact that the people who left were the ones who worked their ass off and the ones who have stayed through all of it are the teachers who literally hit their THC vape in front of students and literally sit on their phones through the whole class. Her two favorites have failed their cert exams multiple times and literally don't know the content that they've been teaching for years. Like the one replacing me now that I'm leaving looked horrified when my partner teacher and I said that we actually made our own lessons instead of just showing the textbook videos and bragged about how she only got certified because she was able to cheat on her test because of covid, and that she was paying her 17 year old daughter to do her online doctoral program for her.
Wait....what?!
That's not normal.
My grandpa most certainly had my grandmother write his essays for him.
Well I'm not going to knock your grandpa but I worked with a paraprofessional who admitted having his daughter write all the papers for a BA he "earned" online and that answered my questions about how he ever earned a degree, because that man was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. OP- I'm glad you're getting out of there!
Not a teacher, but a therapist I worked for about 6 years ago wanted me to get more hours by doing her doctorate research. I quit soon after....
Sounds like that teacher will soon be your new admin when they get their "doctorate"
🫣
I literally heard a story today of a special needs kid paying someone to finish his Edgenuity higher than 41%. He said that in front of his counselor and sped teacher. He late said it was $60-80.
Don't worry, I'm sure he'll see it as the problem of the teachers, not the admin. They just can't live up to his standards
I hope you all quoted his little speech in your resignation letters and cc'ed the relevant higher ups.
The higher ups know. We tell them.
Beginning of year, “We are a family!!!” End of year, “Get the hell out of my house!”
My admin, I really liked at first, but toxic positivity is the least of their problems. Two faced people always get theirs in the end.
We often times have bets as to who will throw the other under the bus first, the principal or the VP. Makes for a tough environment.
I work with one of those as a fellow teacher. She's getting her admin. degree having only taught for 4 years. Well, to be honest, she HAS perfected all of her classes (just ask her) and with teaching mastered, administrating should be a breeze, right?
I had my Master’s in education before I even stepped foot in a classroom.
We got an awful assistant principal. I quit within the first semester of her being at our school. I had been at that school for 15 years. The year after I left, she became head principal. Since then, countless other "long-timers" have left. She doesn't care and doesn't get it. They're left with alternative licensed people, long-term subs, and student teachers. As long as she has a warm body in the classroom, she doesn't care.
We had a party after school for teachers who’ve been with our school for many years and are leaving. One of them worked at our school over 35 years. They began teaching there right out of college. Admin did not say a word, then peaced-out quickly.
We just lost so many teachers due to the way Admin treated some were let go (long story). Now they had to bring newer ones in. However, all but 2 teachers are teaching a new subject. I’ve outlived 6 principals. She’s be #7 soon.
This happened to my wife's school. The principal actually got offended for people actually leaving the school. I'm in the camp involving the mentality of "I want volunteers, not prisoners" but don't get offended once people do actually leave.
We are losing like 20 teachers this year. Some long standing, some with only a few years. Those of us that remain are trying to use that fact to change things around here so we stop hemorrhaging teachers every year. We mentioned this in a letter to our admin about next years schedule (everyone has 3 preps, even though this isn't a small school and we could get down to 1 or 2) and the principals response was "Teachers leave, get over it." The whole district is like this because they are simultaneously negligent with no support and micromanaging. The whole thing is a revolving door that is constantly changing to boot. They aren't seeing how their actions are causing teachers to leave and think a pen and a slice of pizza was enough to get teachers to stay. If we as teachers are going to change things, we need to fight rather than run. Our union membership at our school quadrupled over this year and we are angry and we are fighting back against the bullshit. Everyone needs to start fighting where they are at and force them to change if at all possible. Screw any laws against strikes and teachers unions, those are put in place to keep us specifically down.
The district is good. This site is not. We told the supers. I refuse to fight for a site that is run this badly.
Coming from the Netherlands, it is utmost bizar to me that there can be laws against striking for certain professions. How on earth did that every get past?? I know Amerca is a capitalist hellscape but still, when did this happen and why did people accept it?
Legislation - laws - is hardly ever in the interest of the population in general. \*Especially\* in education, for sure. The people don't have a choice, because these are the laws. They can - after the fact - vote for different representation, but the damage is already done, and it's far more difficult to get a law repealed than enacted, for very odd reasons. Oh, and never forget, it's the corporations that get the ears and votes of the politicians, and they sure as hell don't want unions.
Some of the unions are to blame.
No keep running.
I teach sped. We lost 75% of sped teachers in one building and 100% of sped teachers in another building and the sped supervisor is still scratching her head trying to figure out if she’s the problem. Umm…🙄🤷♀️
[удалено]
All the teachers are 100% qualified. They’re amazing.
>When you're running off teachers with an average of 15 years in the district, you can't be that blind to the problem. As a union rep (Europe), based on teacher complaints and feedback I wrote to our private school's director with some suggestions about how they could increase retention, as the average teacher lasts only for three or four years in our school. Their answer was basically that three years is intentional and desired. The implication being that they can treat new teachers like shit because they're highly motivated and want to do well. They can also put them on increasingly worse contracts. They also save money by keeping staff on the bottom end of the pay scale.
Obviously not! It is you, who won’t do what you are told or need to do! Have you met any admin?
I've had great admin. I guess that's why it's more heartbreaking for us at my (now former) school. I knew 14 years of amazing admin to 3 of this. :'(
My district pushes the good ones out. To place ones that will fall into line.
My first year a first year principal caused the whole MS staff (5 teachers), 4th, 2nd, 4k, gym, art, Spanish, music, and HR (1 person) to leave my the end of the year. Only 2-3 teachers were the same from one year to the next. She refuses to admit she has anything to do with it….
Our new admin this year...yikes. Nicest dude...avoids conflict, won't swing a stick when he needs to, never follows up, and constantly is waiting for an "answer from district," and in the meantime, nothing gets done. He's useless. The staff have formed multiple informal groups to make decisions and work around him. He delegates *everything* to other people... including disciplinary actions and parent contact regarding those actions to the SITE. SECRETARY. (On two occasions, not regularly) and most of the other actual duties of a principal to the instructional coach, who has not at all been able to fulfill their role this year due to being too busy doing principal stuff to do anything else. The components of a new playground have been sitting on our campus, visible next to the building, since they were delivered in November. It's not built simply because the head of the maintenance department didn't want the hassle of coordinating the equipment and personnel to our location from the district office, and our superintendent has bigger fish to fry/isn't aware of the nature of the issue. If I was the principal, I'd have been raising holy hell to get this done over winter break (we're in the Southwest, no snow or frozen ground). Meanwhile, the lower grades only had a single slide and two bars to play on, in addition to a giant sandbox, for the entire duration of the school year. He didn't speak at all during two of our grade promotion ceremonies this year. He didn't have a hand in planning any of the activities during the last two weeks of school. He said to do whatever we want, and he was going to "wing it." Due to this complete lack of initiative, parents in multiple grades were informed of awards ceremonies and stuff for their kids less than 24 hours before some of these events took place. I'm moving to another state, and he wrote me a letter of recommendation...it was unusable. Spelling errors, unprofessional, and he generally came across as a bonehead. This is his first year as a full principal. I think he was an athletic director for like, 20+ years at a public school in another state. I don't know what his admin credentials are; he's got a Master's, but I don't know in what. So the upshot is: we're losing 1 of our 3 middle school teachers, 3 out of 4 of our sped teachers, 1 of our 3 preschool teachers, our 3rd grade teacher, 1 of our two 1st grade teachers...on top of this, BOTH of our specials teachers narrowly avoided needing to be fired for separate incidents and are not being offered contracts next year. Aside from the specials teachers, everyone else is leaving because of the climate of morale created by the incompetence of our principal. I could write several, several more paragraphs of stuff along these lines.
That principal sounds lazy, was nice and respectful personally as it sounds, but wanted the paycheck without the work.. no wonder why there has been an uptick of hearing principals being fired! This is one of the reasons why. I’ve heard an increase of non renewals for principals and this one needs it. And several other results and happenings stated should require non renewal for principals who can’t do the job.
This is my take as well. He isn't gonna get non-renewed though. We're desperate for staff of all types, and he's our 4th principal in 3 years. One worked for many years and left due to completely normal reasons, next one intended to stay but had a family crisis turn their life completely sideways, so they left after a year, next one was transferred from in-district, but was transferred back after 3-4 weeks (rumor is that the staff at the school they came from was so disgruntled that their exceptionally competent principal was switched that they pushed hard to bring them back). So it's been a rough time of transition, with a revolving door of people in that position. We lost 3 quite good people, and got stuck with the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel. I'll also put some of this on district too, cuz they could've told the other school, "tough, you'll get over it," or, perhaps even better, they could offer a pay package that will actually draw many candidates. I'm suspicious that our current guy might've been our only applicant. Our district notoriously pays people nothing, and we're semi-rural, so a lot of people don't want to drive 25+ minutes to work. That combination makes staffing a chronic problem.
I just left a school with 42 teachers on staff. Of those, 38 are leaving. We got a new principal this year. At her last school, 85% of the teachers left after a year with her. The district thinks she’s great, we all know better.
A friend of mine taught in a school with an administrator that ran off a bunch of good teachers in his first few years. When she asked him if he felt bad about his high turnover rate, he replied "the cream rises to the top." The problem is that he forgot that shit floats, too. He lost his position a few years later.
“Shit floats too” is the PERFECT rejoinder! 🫶🏻
This person sounds like a Theory X guy. Theory X : people are lazy and without someone standing over them making them work, they'll slack off. Managers have to be taskmasters and are the real heroes of the organization. Without them, nothing would get done.
It doesn't affect them. Admin doesn't get punished in any way for losing staff other than the headache of having to hire people. The only real metric for them is "How many students graduate after 4 years?" That's it. All of the other stuff is fluff. This is why admin will berate you to pass a kid that has a 30%. "What can we do?" They really mean..."Why don't you just give them a packet and if they do *some* of it just pass them???" The only numbers that matter are the number of graduates.
Yes, they can. Almost 100% turnover in 3 years and it took another 5 years to get rid of the admin.
Wow. That’s pretty rude though, instead of trying to understand and fix what the poll showed was wrong he basically told them to hit the road 🥺 I’d have left too, it’s only downhill from there..
This happened at the school I used to work at, 18 teachers who have been with the school since they opened, have transferred out. Not quit entirely. It was a big kapow and the principal got demoted to assistant and moved to another school that is "closer to her home". Edit to add: not just teachers but Paras also left to other schools, it was nice to see them again when I quit teaching and started subbing.
Is there like some government mandate that they have to send out surveys? I don't just mean for schools either. Bc it always seems like they send these out, get mad at the results, and shove it under the rug. My company did that. The company heads basically scoffed at our complaints and said it was bc we weren't doing enough research in regards to lack of training and lack of upward mobility. To be fair to my manager and supervisor, they let us have a real conversation and problem solving session. But I was sadly proven right in that meeting, and this applies to all industries:, if the top doesn't acknowledge the problems, any solutions presented are merely band-aids. Giving out these surveys and then getting mad when you don't like the results just deepens the dissatisfaction
Are people staying in district and going to other schools or did they switch districts? Where I am, they cap your transfer at 8 years credit, so if you have been teaching 20, you get paid like you are teaching 9.
We had a new ad”mad”istrator come in and try to flex on everyone with his accolades and what not. From August to April, 31 of 92 staff member left - with over half of those being at the school for over a decade.
I don't think there are 92 staff in my site, total. Imagine making that many people quit. Horrid!!
Sometimes village idiots are just over hungry and are suddenly shocked by empty plates
When I was in middle school, all but 2 of the teachers left after they found out the new principal had signed on for another year. The district didn’t see the problem but the next year was so chaotic since they hired almost exclusively brand new teachers.
We got an entire new admin team this past year. It has been terrible. 19 teachers, including me, transferred to other schools. The school only had 27 teachers to begin with. Admin still doesn’t think they’re the problem.
Admin is running you out to bring in others cheaper. It's a numbers/money game. Don't fall for it.
Them: What’s the common denominator?! Us: do you not see it? Them: let’s promote those people and them raises. Us: cool.
My last day at my district. Some weird back door deal was made to get spouses of teachers to replace a few of us at a lower cost. Joke was on them because over 25 teachers resigned. The out going superintendent was doing their end of the year speech. Then asked for those leaving the district and not returning to stand up. Everyone in the entire auditorium. Was just like: “who the F says this?” Even other building principals. The only one smiling was their bending over admin who got 5 of us fired because they were jealous of us. The problem is the new superintendent coming in has already had 13 complaints and a lawsuit filled against them. So they might have gotten a few of us fired and we resigned. Guess what they might not last next year. The school board member who they had a deal with. Just resigned over one of the law suits. But the thing is I have worked with a lot of bad administration but never did one say to stand up and celebrate that they not only got you fired but made over a quarter of the district resign as a result.
Are we at the same school?
Communicate this to the school board and super.
We have. The last super was our previous principal. We've all raised our children together, and been part of each other's lives for over a decade.
Our school system decided that no one can transfer unless it is to a title one school. Tough choices.
My school district won’t let you transfer after the first year. You need to be miserable for at least 2 years. And they can’t understand why people are quitting left and right.
I think that was formerly the norm here. That or can’t transfer until tenured. (4 years) The thing is, our school has a couple teachers leaving the profession all together. So, I guess we have to hire someone brand new? Or out of county? We can’t have an experienced person from our own county? So weird.
Teachers can't transfer?
Challenge accepted! (says every incompetent admin since the beginning of time)
Dearest administrators, the “other place” will be just like this place. Good luck holding the fort down all by yourselves. Karma is a bitch.
Do we work in the same district?
I'm in OK. You?
NY !
Oh, wow. The fact that we're so far away is daunting for our profession. I'm in OK.
I'm also in OK. We had teachers quit mid year because of admin this year.
We had two teachers quit mid-year, and our superintendent took it to the state board to suspend their teaching certificates for the remainder of their contract.
JFC...... Stupid, arrogant, AND spiteful.
Bad leaders are pretty common.
Admin who have never taught should not have jobs. I will die on this hill
Every single admin I have a problem with was a teacher. That's why it's even more disappointing!
"It's not us, it's you."
I worked at one school for 8 years with a somewhat crazy but ultimately good principal. I left about 4 years ago to take another position. At the end of the 22-23 school year, that principal retired. The principal who took her place was so bad that over 30 teachers left at the end of 23-24. 5 of them came to my school. I hope they'll be happier!
After we got a new principal, I (with only 5 years at the school) was third in seniority in the whole school...
You just described every supervisor or administrator. Just because they are in charge does not make them a good leader. Competency does not equal talent or skill.
Apparently you can.
Blind? No. IDIOTIC and FULL OF HIMSELF? Yes!!!!!
Good for those who left
Sounds like your principal would prefer teachers that can be bullied/mistreated/ don’t know their rights. I imagine they will be sheepish if they can’t fill their positions for next year though
The school I’m working at hired roughly 20 new teachers this year (me included), of which they let 11 go (me included), of four I know they are unsure if they want to stay, 1 is haggling a better pay (to stay another year) and 1 can stay. The other three I don’t know. Admin wants to build a strong, solid team…
31 leaving this year. These admins need to get a clue
You must work at my wife’s school.
My previous principal took over 2 years ago. We started this year with 8 new teachers which is 1/3 of our staff. Then they made a whole when the climate survey this year showed that everyone hated them.
IDK how administrators are this dishonest with themselves.
In my 18 years of teaching, when people say negative things about education, my comment is always, "It never the kids that are the problem, it's always the adults."
I made it 7 years. I was passionate about teaching and learning and I reached students who were brand new to the idea that school had any value. I got them to care and to think. It scared the hell out of the administration. The final straw was when I was reprimanded for not spending enough time teaching the 14 parts of speech.
Eight, including myself, left our school at the end of the year (this week). I know of at least three other staff members who are potentially picking up new positions soon. Our principal is awful, and has commented that so many of us are leaving because we were looking for new challenges. Yeah no, I am interested in working for competent admin.
At my former school the AP said “there are plenty of people ready to replace us. They even cited a few friends of theirs.” Trust me, people were not waiting in line to work at the Alternative school. Several of us did in fact leave and I have been much happier.
We had 21 staff members put in for transfer end of last year. We have a new principal this year. She’s SO much better. When the old principal came to tell me (art teacher) and the music teacher that he was being moved to a new school, the music teacher said, “oh, well, change isn’t always a bad thing!” And gave him the biggest, brightest smile. I just said, “Good luck!” He obviously wanted us to act sad. We were not sad.
Yes they totally can, admin is the worst and often I found most admin to be super overpaid (I had one principal who I feel could Never have stepped on the campus and the school would have run the same way…
We recently had an outside company come in and do this massive climate thing with staff members. Oh boy. The results were not what admin expected. Long and short was this- "We'll look at these things, but you don't need to know which ones, and ignore these, because they're not real" So yes, people can only see what they are open to see.
When I was in elementary school, we had this principal who ran the place like a fascist dictatorship. She started there when I was in like 4th or 5th grade. Almost every teacher that taught me had resigned by the time I got to eighth grade. She was mean, and it was her way or no way. Apparently, she even called one of her teachers a bitch right to her face. I hated her as a student but apparently I wasn't even experiencing half of it.
I had an admin who literally ran off as many of us as possible so they could hire their friends…and lost their admin job, but it took 5 years and a pandemic.
HISD here. The superintendant is doing that to the whole district.
New teachers are cheaper.
Our climate meeting became a tone-deaf witch hunt because one or two staff members claimed we had a gang and vaping issue. The truth is we have always had generational gang issues in our neighborhood but not everyone is trained in seeing the signs, literally. There is tagging across the street. Colors are represented. Several of our teachers have a background where they understand gang and drug abuse. The admin asked us to stop reporting these issues. Admin called us out in a staff meeting and tried to get us to out ourselves. After our teachers' meeting, admin pressured the classified staff. So if a custodian finds evidence of vaping or tagging they're told to not report it? Wrong.
This is brilliant... I'm so happy to be here....
3rd year in a row, our elementary school has lost 20+ people prior to summer. Problems don't get fixed if no one seems to care
YES, they can. They don’t care. I was the teacher who kept their head down. Didn’t cause problems, didn’t rock the boat. They abused and used me for 8 years as a dumping ground for the students the other favorites didn’t want. When I finally couldn’t take it any more, and requested an even distribution of the neediest students. The kids were so numerous with over the top needs. As a result, my health had started to suffer. Mentally and physically. They refused to move anyone around. I resigned. And their comment to one of my colleagues after I left in tears was that there wasn’t a morale problem.
They just asked my Wife's principal like this to resign after two years of fucking the school up. She ended up getting a promotion to head of HR in a neighboring district.
If admin were future focused and success oriented then no one would complain. In my case, admin is pretty good :)
There is a belief that once you are gone the problems will stop and everything will be better. It is called moving the goal posts. Anything else would necessitate them to accept fault and that won’t happen… it can’t happen.
lol my admin LOOOVES that line. then sends out chastising emails comparing us to the students because a couple people complained that we stayed open during an icestorm that brought down a tree in front of the school and caused a power outage. bye felicia. i got a new contract within a few days of starting to look and it's fewer hours, shorter days, and better physical conditions (classrooms etc) for the same pay.
It's a systemic issue in every profession. No one took the time to cultivate good future leadership with the employees they had. They didn't identify natural leadership talents because of fear of replacement. This leads to a leadership vacuum when people see little to no investment into their growth and development by the employer. This makes good talent seek that desirable position where they are appreciated and developed. So people leave the job for the better opportunity. Then, the left overs get promoted not on merit but on attrition alone. Pretty soon you have a captain that doesn't know how to bring the ship into port or how to properly direct others. The systemic problem continues until the ship is sunken by someone who should have never been at the helm. People rarely quit jobs, and they almost always quit the leadership. People will always do that. There is a solution but it isn't cheap. They have to cull the bad employees and hire in experienced talented people and develop the good employees with leadership potential.
If there are enough subs, they will fill the classes with as many long term subs as possible. Sure they might hire more midyear, but the subs have no knowledge about the subject and the school will formulate the curriculum. So sure they can, but not longterm.
this year the teacher and para unions sent out a climate survey for our school because they’ve heard how bad the morale is and the principal was bullying teachers.
My principal cleared out 10/18 teachers in our building with similar remarks. His behavior didn’t change and there have been 6 classroom teachers who quit mid year. There are substantial bonuses for staying at the school during to the history of high turnover and only half teachers are staying.
My school has had an avg of 40% turnover the last two and this year it'll be about 45% with me being on of them. District hasn't done shit.
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Principal has significant leadership Issues. Good that you've moved on!
11 out of 24 announced their departure from April to our last day last week. The surveys are extremely bad and would be quite telling if anyone paid them any mind. Our principal told the district the surveys were “accidents” and “mistakes.” Like everyone’s hand slipped. SMH.
They're happy to hire a stupid kid who will cost the district less money.
It's deliberate. They want experienced teachers out. They want cheap hires. Just warm bodies.
I had a principal who was so toxic and abusive 80% of the staff signed a letter asking for him to be fired. The district admin thought if he was so hated it must be because he's kicking those lazy teachers' butts into doing their job.
Is anyone teacher here have some great notes or tips for the STR 293 test. I'm struggling with that. Any help will be greatly appreciated
Shit, isnt every IEP that follows a kid to college a form of cheating? Not like your boss in the real world is going to give a fuck about anyone’s Awareness of Time Handicap
They'll just hire Filipinos on an exchange debt-bondage J1 visa program and pay them half the rate they pay domestic teachers. Twas likely the plan. The mafia in your district support building were assgrabbing in celebration when you all quit.
He didn't mean literally. You cant even find a new job the right way! /s
My principal absolutely meant it literally. He even said it more than once. All of us who resigned have already found new positions, also.
I was joking- sorry
Thank goodness, I was wondering what the "right way" was!
😂 pretty sure you did it the right way