Honesty, Is Such a Lonely Word

This is my third year with Mr. Principal. It is also his third year of being a principal, so he came to us as a "newbie," so to speak. We actually have quite a bit in common. He is my age and we graduated from high school the same year. Both of us saw Heart for our first concert. We both have about the same amount of education experience. I could get along fine with him if he wasn't such a bull-headed, attention-deficit-disorder, top-down administrator. When he first came to our school, he wanted to meet with me weekly as I'm the union building rep. He felt it would be a good way for me to keep him up to speed on staff issues and concerns. These meetings, as most any conversation with him (I forgot to add "egoist" to the list above)go, quickly became just me listening to how great he was for a half hour of my time. I didn't see any effectiveness in them. So last year when he talked about again meeting regularly, I sort-of didn't pursue it. And I got away with it. This year, he wanted to meet again, but twice a month and he wanted our other building rep included (OK-I do have a control problem, and I tend to be the "main" building rep. You and me but mostly me, you know...). So Ms. Other Rep and I looked at the weekly calendar, taking into consideration our twice monthly union meeting, and taking into consideration Mr. Principal's meetings, and finally settled on a day of the week that would work. We decided to let Mr. Principal choose the actual dates. He did, and we got rolling. On advice from another building rep, I put together a short agenda of things I wanted to discuss. Since I had had four issues to deal with before school even began, there were some things I wanted discussed right away. I sent my agenda to Mr. Principal and to Ms. Other Building Rep to add to if they chose. Mr. Principal did choose, and did add, but I said I wanted to talk about my issues first, since that's why we were meeting regularly. I got my way. So last Wednesday was our first "Union Communications" meeting. We got together after school. The first thing Mr. Principal began to do was to tell me I had to stop emailing our union president about issues without first coming to him. Mr. Principal said he couldn't understand why people didn't just come to him with their concerns. He said he thought that last year by the end of the year people were finally feeling comfortable enough to do that. Well, I didn't feel the need to explain nor apologize for any of my emails, nor did I share (and maybe I should have) that I know if I do not have the information from the union side about a particular situation, that Mr. Principal won't listen to me. I know this. But, I told him I also didn't really appreciate it when he sends my emails/questions/concerns out to the whole staff, sometimes to the district. Then I focused on the comment he made about wanting staff to be candid. "If you want me to be honest and candid, then I want you to know that I think staff morale is as low as I've ever seen it at this school," I said. He couldn't understand why that would be. So I began to list everthing that's been dumped on us this year, and the first month isn't even over: We're a state-designated "low-performing school," so this year and for three years we'll have people coming to watch us teach and tell us what we are not doing right. We now have a "Student Success Data Binder" where we will have to be keeping meticulous data on each kid. We have a sucky dismissal process where we have to take attendance in our bus line, thereby making dismissal last about 20 minutes beyond our required contact minutes (but I wasn't able to find this to be against contract, and I tried...). He began to justify each thing I had listed. He started with the state thing, telling me how that was all beyond his control. "I understand that one," I replied. "But what about dismissal? This has added a lot of time to the teacher's day, and no one is happy with it. This is your deal, so you have the control to change it." He did agree finally, and we began to brainstorm some ways to improve it. Now, we will form a small committe of teachers, because we know best, to make improvements to the dismissal procedure and make it less of a burden on teachers. I moved on to my second major concern. "We have gotten three different emails from three different sources, and the effect of the emails was to make staff feel scolded or tattled on," I said. I showed him the three emails. One came from him. Another came from Ms. Office Assistant. And the third email, which was the tattling email, came from a gal (a parent) who was hired last year part-time in a role that really puts her working with families and community (but her boundaries always seem to be blurred, and she seems to have her fingers in everything. Most staff do not like the fact that she is working at our school). Anyway, he took the emails, and seemed open to my side of the argument as to why the tone was not good for teacher morale. I felt like I was heard. Finally, we talked about the morning duty schedule, which our district is the only one in the area that makes teachers do duty rather than office people and paras. This had been an issue last year in the fall, so I took concerns to Mr. Principal, and he and I made a schedule that people could live with. One of the things teachers said quite loudly is that they wanted to have duty the same morning each week with their whole team. But this year when Mr. Principal put out the schedule, he didn't keep teams together. So everyone was mad. After much complaining before school even started, he dumped the schedule into my lap, telling staff to tell me what they wanted. Then I got all these requests in my email box, and I was on overload with just starting the year. I tabled it. I told Mr. Principal I couldn't even think about it until I got my year off to a good start. He said fine. However, Ms. Other Building Rep put together a new schedule, and it looked good. So at the end of our meeting last Wednesday, we tweaked what she had and then put it out to the teachers. Finally at 5 pm we were done. Our meeting had lasted over an hour. Normally I won't stay that long, but this time it was fine. We ended the meeting on a positive note. Then on Thursday (was it just one day later?) we got an email from Ms. Parent-Who-is-Now-An-Employee. The email was about our monthly committee meetings, that are one of our eight monthly meetings Mr. Principal is allowed to have. The email was to "clarify" this meeting, and how/when/where we could have this meeting, and that we were to use One Note for meeting notes. Basically, she was telling us our job. She is not our boss. She is not our principal. She is not even the assistant principal. It bugged me that she is telling us what to do in this way. And, how could Mr. Principal let her act as our boss, "clarifying" his expectations in that way? I forwarded that email to Mr. Principal. I told him that believe it or not, teachers whould have prefered to have received that information from him, and not Ms. Community Gal. I explained that coming from her it seemed that she was directing us, and that since it concerned his meetings, and that she wasn't our boss, that information should have come from him. I don't know if my email maybe embarrassed him, pointed out something he should have considered, or what. But his response back was what was my problem with Ms. Parent-Now-Employee, anyway? Because I was complaining about her emails, and earlier in the week I brought her up to him. So what was my problem? I replied that no, I did not have a personal vendetta with Ms. Parent-Now-Employee. I said I was just being honest, as I thought that that was what he wanted us to do. I said I had gotten the message that I was to be candid. Apparently, he only wants me to be candid when it doesn't make him look bad. And that's going to be tough.