Two reports from former colleagues at two different schools, both dealing with something similar : a Board member sharing confidential information. Both cases were intentional, and both led to highly effective principals leaving and to years of problems and declines for the schools.
In one case, a school hired a new principal to turn-around the school in terms of its academics, extra-curricular activities and enrollment. The appointee had been very successful in his previous role where he had been for 10 years and had achieved all of these, and at his post prior to that where over five or so years he had done the same.
So the entire community was excited to welcome and to embrace the new school leader. Well, not the entire community. A group of teachers were not as enthusiastic because they predicted any improvements would come from changes which would directly affect them, and they were quite comfortable with the way things were.
The new principal spent the first semester watching and listening, and early in the second semester, he submitted a confidential report to the Board which met in closed session to review the report and his recommendations. He was critical of several teachers, methodologies and past teacher supervision practises and recommended new contracts, new definitions of "satisfactory", new performance management procedures and the non-renewal of certain contracts. This was a right-to-work state so employment was "at whim" and without tenure.
One of the Board members was a "parent representative" and decided that this report and recommendations should be shared with parents, despite it being confidential and reviewed in closed session and despite no decisions having been made. Almost immediately, this reached the faculty, including those teachers who had been tagged for non-renewal.
These teachers contacted parent allies and urged them to campaign against the principal who was then confronted at morning drop-off. As he did not know the confidential report had been leaked, he did not know from whence came the aggression, and did not really understand what the parents were saying.
They also confronted him in the weekly faculty meeting, aggressively and provocatively, and prevented any business being done. They verbally attacked him when he entered the faculty lounge, and shouted abuse when he walked past or when they passed his office. One even openly bullied the principal's young son and several were unpleasant to the boy.
The principal called the Board Chair who then asked the offending Board member to resign. The Board made a public statement to the effect that the release of the confidential document was wrong, and that the Board supported the principal. However they also decided not to act on the report, but to wait until things calmed down which had the effect of being seen to endorse the actions and comments of the problematic parents and teachers.
By mid-semester, the principal had resigned. The Board then went through two interim principals and a third they hired and fired because he could not manage the parent and faculty factions. It was four years and an entirely new Board before they were able to hire a new principal, and in her first year, she made changes to contracts, introduced new definitions of "satisfactory" and new performance management procedures and non-renewed certain teacher contracts. The Board member who had caused the problems left the school the following year and two of the more problematic teachers were fired during the school year by one of the interim principals.
The school did not recover for five years ,and reportedly is only now at the stage they were at when the Board hired the first principal to improve things.
In the other case, the principal received two reports of a Board member having an affair with a teacher which he reported this to the Board Chair, not as an accusation but as reports of what was circulating in the community. The Board Chair then spoke to the Board member and while what he said was not known, this Board member then developed a personal animus to the principal. She told basketball team parents that the program was being closed. It wasn't, but a deputation of angry parents ambushed him in his office. She told another group of parents that the principal had fired a staff member for illness. He hadn't; the person had resigned and the matter had been discussed at a Board meeting to ensure it would not be so construed. She told another group that a popular teacher had been let go because the principal did not like him. This too was untrue, it was a legal matter and again had been discussed by the Board because of possible law enforcement involvement.
The principal felt he was not being supported by the Board or by the Board Chair so resigned, and like the school above, they had problems hiring a replacement. Two years and three interims later, what had been one of the leading non-public schools in the state was forced to hire an unqualified and inexperienced teacher to become principal as higher-caliber candidates would not apply for the position or dropped out during the hiring process.
Six years later, a different Board has now hired a qualified and experienced principal, although interestingly he is an international hire and not local. Meanwhile, the school lost its academic and extra-curricular positions in the state and had over a 200% faculty turnover in that time.
In both cases, a Board member released information which should have remained inside the Board, although the second case is additionally problematic in that the information related to a Board member. The primary concern of any Board member should be the wellbeing of the school "x" years in the future, and not his/her personal feelings or his/her relationship with the school or any of its community members. I am reminded of the axiom that a Board member must decide on what fees a school should charge and not how much s/he would then end up paying.
Both principals were by all accounts highly effective and successful, both before the schools in question and subsequently. In both case, the schools and thus their children, families and staff. suffered because what happened in Vegas did not there stay.
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