You may have noticed, dear reader, that I spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about administrators. Maybe I'm obsessed. Maybe I'm reacting to a string of horrible experiences brought about a series of incompetent principals. Or maybe it's because...
As your grandmother told you, "A fish rots from the head."
She's right, I've seen it myself.
I have born witness to the destruction of a perfectly fine school. The process is reminiscent of the Fall of Rome. Rome continued to exist after it fell apart, but it was a shadow of its former, glorious self. The same can be said for the school I was at. It still exists, but word on the street is, "It isn't what it once was."
The downward spiral started when a new principal was hired. The school was (and still is) obscure and poor (for a private school), so we did not have much choice in candidates. The man we chose, after a two day interview process, seemed to meet most of the criteria the board, the faculty, and the parents. But as everyone learned later, you don't get to know someone in a two day interview. All you get to know the person's carefully crafted public image. The one that is desperate to please all the stakeholders and land the six-figure job. The fish is still fresh.
And it stays like that for awhile longer. The new principal was afraid, mostly of screwing up. For the first year, everything was fine. The school hummed away on the fumes of the previous principal's competence. By the second year, though things started to change. Small things, seemingly trivial. A policy here, a new rule there. Sure the new policies and rules made the faculty's job harder, but it didn't really matter. The new principal was spending money like water on salaries (not just his own), and benefits, and classroom equipment, and other perks.
What no one realized at the time was that the principal was trying to buy his employees' loyalty. Rigor mortis was starting to set in.
To be continued....
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