I'm nothing if not honest

Yesterday morning I wrote a post about my meeting with the school principal. It was honest - brutally so - but nothing I wouldn't say directly to her face. When we met last month I told her that I thought she was doing a terrible job and that if it was up to me she wouldn't have a job next year. I also listed for her, by month, everything I thought she had done poorly since she started the job. I've never hidden my feelings from her.

But apparently some parent - who probably doesn't know me well and doesn't realize that I have said all this to her face - sent the principal a link to my blog. When I got up this morning there was an email from the principal that read: "Interesting blog....silly me.....I honestly believed you wanted to work together. I apologize for wasting your time."

Silly lady.

I won't cut and paste the entire email exchange that followed but here are the high points of what I told her:

• I never say anything here on the blog that I wouldn't say directly to the person I'm writing about.
• I've already told her that I think she has done a terrible job.
• I also said that I thought the meeting did go well until the end.
• I told her that I never said I didn't want to work with her, only that I wasn't going to let her steam roll over me like she did in October when she wanted stuff from the PTO.
• Finally, I told her that she can either continue to follow me on my blog or wait for whichever parent sent her the link to keep her updated. Or she could call me.

She wrote me back saying that she hadn't done it deliberately and it was an honest question as a result of me telling her Hannah was reading at a 3rd grade level in kindergarten.

It may have been. Who knows?

So I wrote back and told her that if that was the case I apologize but given her history over the past school year, she could probably see why I would be suspicious of her actions. I also told her that I can still work with someone I don't like and that I will probably continue not to trust her until she has earned that trust. I told her that I had given her the benefit of the doubt in the fact that I assumed some parent emailed her the link and not that she was Googling me. Then I asked when she wanted to get together for the meeting to show she was serious about working on a differentiated/gifted program for the school.

To which she sent - in my opinion, and only my opinion - a somewhat snotty (but obviously frustrated) response and ignored the request for a serious meeting about the topic.

So, to the parent that obviously reads this blog and sent her the link, feel free to let her know that I still don't like her, I still think she has done a bad job to date, and that I will still work with her on both improving school/parent communication and a differentiated/gifted program if she's serious about working on them as well.

Oh wait, I already told her all that myself.