These Stories About Bad Principals Will Piss You Off and Then Hopefully Make You Want to Do Something About It

Sometimes, Being Bad Is Doing Poorly at an Important Job

Once, after my students had scored an average of 86 percent correct on a [practice state math test] shortly before the actual exam, my principal insisted they should be scoring 100 percent, because our goal was 100 percent passing. I told her that all of them had indeed passed, since the cut score was around 70. She reiterated her expectation that the goal should be 100 percent correct. On my first evaluation, he gave me low marks across the board, along with comments about “bad rapport with the faculty.” I was shocked by that and asked for examples of what he meant. He said, “I don’t have examples, it’s just the feeling I get.” It was edge-of-the-seat leadership. Nothing had any solid foundation to it. Any new information she heard she would make whipcrack decisions, no matter if it contradicted work we had been doing, or something she had formally decided with the staff at the beginning of the year. Teachers, and my other administrative colleagues, felt constant whiplash, and the constant changing environment of the school left students confused and adults not sure how to explain it. In my third year of teaching, my administrator called me a week into summer vacation. “Remember those times I observed in your classroom? Could you just send me the lesson plans from those visits and write up an evaluation?” No lie. The man had walked through my classroom twice that year. That was my tenure year. I was not the only one granted tenure from such incompetence.

Sometimes, Bad Principals Are Just Bad People With Power

I had an administrator throw a stapler at my head. She also parked her Jaguar lengthwise behind my car in the school parking lot and refused to move it so I could go home. I was stuck at school until 9 p.m., when she finally left. I could go on and on about administrators who roam the halls literally picking battles with Black boys over the pettiest stuff. In just the last month, one Black boy was suspended three days for “theft” which was drinking a juice from a girl's locker…and the girl didn't care! Another Black boy was called to the office for sharing a locker and berated for a good 10 minutes for lying about it until finally the boy said, “Get the fuck out of my face!” And boom, now they have a reason to suspend three days. A third Black boy was sent out by a sub for throwing juice (that someone had thrown at him first) and was frustrated that no one would listen to his side of the story. He was suspended three days for disrespect and literally put out of the building. This kid had no behavior record at school, had recently been jumped and gotten a concussion, and was forced to walk the neighborhood. I was physically attacked by a student: dragged down the stairs by my hair. I had never been assaulted before, and I also felt like the student trusted me, so I took two days off to process the incident. Upon my return, I was reprimanded for not taking my job seriously. A beloved principal passed away the week before school started. We had the funeral Labor Day and school started the next day. The first thing the new principal did was remove all pictures and memorials to the principal who had passed. She told us in the first meeting that the principal who passed represented the past and we have to move forward. She canceled plans for us to dedicate the library to our late principal.

Bad Principals Always Land Somewhere

She had to leave her last post, at a middle school, because the teachers did a vote of “no confidence” on her. I don’t even know really what that means, except she was on administrative leave for a while and then got shuffled to our school. He is now the principal of a small high school in a different part of my state, and I am both horrified that he was re-hired after his previous behavior and also saddened for the teachers who work for him. There was an admin at my school, an AP, who forged a letter of recommendation from our principal when applying to a nearby school. Like, same district kind of nearby. So then that principal called ours (them being close colleagues and all) to thank him for the letter and chat about her…She's currently a principal at a Catholic middle school. Somehow.

Let’s Stop Turning Our Backs on Bad Bosses