Saturday, January 30, 2010

Aspiring to Mediocrity.

Our district Admin is going crazy again. Musical chairs with campus Administrators. Moving two out, offering them classroom teaching positions if they so desire, a Principal from one school moved to another. An interim AD moved from one to another,an assistant from one school moved to another. One assistant moved to a school that already has a full complement of administrators, even though my campus is minus one administrator. Why?

One of the reasons listed by dao is that morale at this particular campus was down. Is this a result of the recent survey asking about job satisfaction? Is it possible that these cuts/changes were partially driven by this questionnaire? That was one of the reasons given by district admin (notice no caps) for these changes. What will these actions do to morale now? If it was low before, how low will it go now? They don't exactly instill confidence and trust. We need leaders on each campus and at the district level that we have confidence and trusting relationships with. This is crazy.

Why is it better to do it now, halfway through the first grading period of this semester rather than spring break or during the summer? Could they possibly have chosen a more disruptive time and method to implement these changes? This will cause problems on all levels of campus life, down to each student in each classroom. Some of these positions that have been vacated will be filled by others with Admin Certification who were now teaching up until this time, which will mean that other teachers will be moved around in order to have coverage in each classroom. Out of the 6 schools in our district, 3 were left unscathed, and I am happy for them. The other 3 are going to have big changes on Monday.

And is there any truth to the rumor that there will be a nation-wide search to find a new principal for this school next year? Is our district sound enough financially to undertake a search like this? We have to scrape and beg to get copy paper or printer cartridges, and they are considering a nation=wide search for a principal? Look at our past nationwide searches, they didn't turn out to be all that great.

Seems to me that in our district, if you are perceived as being competent and good at what you do, you get jerked out of your position and moved to a different campus. It has happened before, now it has happened again

Likewise, if you are bad at what you do, you don't get invited back the next year. If you are really bad you are fired midyear.

However if you are somewhere in the middle, merely mediocre, might just be the best place to be. Hence my new goal---I am now Aspiring To Be Mediocre.




Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises.
-Elizabeth Zimmerman

1 comment:

swimfastr said...

I'm with you knit-sis!!! All I can say, is, that I got out while the gettin' was GOOD!! I get to strive for EXCELLENCE where I am now!!!