If she only knew what she unleashed.....

Yesterday morning I met with the school principal. I have not made it a secret - most of all from her - that I think she has done a terrible job this year. This is only her first year at our school but man, this lady stinks as a principal. Last month the two of us got into it because she thought I didn't have enough respect for her and her position and I thought she was a sucky principal who works for the taxpayers and therefore should answer to the taxpayers.

It was a delightful conversation.

Anyhoo, since that "pull no punches" meeting she has actually been bending over backwards to get on my good side. One of the things I think she has failed miserably at this year is communication with the parents. She had the school go cold turkey switching over to paperless communication with the parents without having a good, effective paperless system in place and she wasn't willing to explore any other options or compromises. It was a nightmare. She knew that was a subject that I felt strongly about so she's been soliciting my opinions on how to make it better.

Yesterday was the meeting about communication and it was a very good meeting. We talked about different ideas of how we could improve the communication between the parents and the school while still staying with a paperless system. For the first time I thought I was going to walk out of a meeting with her without wanting to find the nearest bucket of tar and pail of feathers. (Yes, that's how much I dislike this woman.)

But then, five minutes before the end of that meeting, she hit me with a whammy.

My weak spot.

Hannah's intelligence.

She's a sneaky one. At the very last minute, knowing I had to leave at exactly 8:30 a.m. to make it to a doctor's appointment in Franklin, she threw out this little tidbit.

Mrs. S: "So, this is off topic but I wanted to get your thoughts on how the school is doing providing for kids who may be more advanced or need to be challenged more."

WTF?

That has been an issue of mine since Hannah was in kindergarten! The school spends millions of dollars each year - by state mandate - on the Special Education program but doesn't spend a single dime on a talented and gifted program. The previous principal would barely even let teachers break the kids into reading groups for those that are more advanced then others because it wasn't politically correct anymore to label kids as "average, advanced, or needs extra assistance".

So basically this principal was dangling my greatest dream for school change right in front of me. I think she had done a little extra research on me - not to mention I told her in our last contentious meeting how I felt about the SpEd funding - and decided to throw out that little tidbit to appease me. To make me think she's "on my side". But what she doesn't know about me is that once you give me an inch, I'll take a mile and a half!

She threw out that little nugget at the last minute so my response was:

Me: "We definitely don't have time for this now but I'd love to get together for another discussion soon. The short answer is: horrible. The school does a horrible job for those students. And here are a list of other parents that feel the same way. We'll be in touch for a meeting."

I think that surprised her so she started back-pedaling a little and said that it would be a great goal for us to work through next year in order to get something implemented the following year.

Me: "That's great but it won't help Hannah any. Now that you're open to this idea let's get a committee together this spring and summer to have something in place by the fall."

The look of fear in her eyes was priceless.

She obviously still doesn't know me very well.