Hiring couples

A conversation at my weekly get-together over coffee with a former colleague turned to a problematic situation at a friend of a friend's school. This school had hired a wonderful new deputy principal. However he had come with a spouse who was not so wonderful and therein lies the problem.

School jenga

Current protests about and against public school boards bring two things to mind. Firstly, these are all public district schools which is of course the root of the problem. Public schools must by definition (and by law) be all things to all people, so including "a" will upset the supporters of "b" and excluding "c" will ignite the followers of "d". The second is the jenga-like nature of schools: it is rarely possible to change just one thing.

Teachers and porn

I recently had news of someone I knew vaguely at high school and then at college. He was a few years older than me, but I knew who he was and we bumped shoulders at various times. Ten or so years ago he lost his position as a school principal because a district-wide IT update lead to the discovery of porn on his school computer. He claimed innocence, hired an investigator, found it was so, and received both compensation and an apology payment for the lack of due process and reputational damage. Now he is in the news again, this time for porn on his cellphone.

A problem with transcripts

I was speaking with a friend yesterday who has encountered something of a problem. She is the dean of a large "college" at a local state university and last week was sent the list of all professorial and teaching staff associated with her college. This was the official list generated by the university's central human resources department, and clearly it has been some time since this was done since she had not received such a list previously. The problem? Roughly 50% of the records were substantively incorrect.