This is a classic case of a bad principal who will likely get away with what she is pulling. Only an act of God can remove a principal from a public school. The worst "punishment" a principal can get is reassignment to another position. A teacher wrongfully fired, however, can have his or her livelihood destroyed and along with it health insurance, pensions, his or her home, the whole nine yards.
NY Daily NewsAn angry Brooklyn principal was caught on tape berating teachers after they trashed her on a crucial school survey, the Daily News has learned.
...
"If you don't trust me, you air that in the school," Ramirez is heard saying in the tape from June 2009, just after she learned the survey's results.
"You don't put that out there for the public because if I were to begin putting out some of your dirty laundry, a lot of you wouldn't be here."
Confronted about charges of intimidation, Ramirez denied she received any poor marks on the survey. "That was good," she claimed.
The survey results paint a different picture. Nearly 60% of teachers said they don't "trust the principal at his or her word."
And 58% disagreed with the statement, "The principal is an effective manager who makes the school run
smoothly."
Gotham Schools has the survey in
question.
I like this comment at the end of the blog post, which is totally true:
The fact remains, whether teachers and/or parents are honest or not, the survey results really make no difference. Principals who continually receive low marks are never disciplined. Numerous schools that received an “F” in environment still got overall “A’s” on their Report Cards, and their principals received only praise from the DOE leadership. School surveys are only an expensive farce that trick parents and teachers into thinking that they actually have a say in how a their school is run. All that principals are really held accountable for is test scores (which make up the other 90% of the school’s grade) and, as long as they don’t make the news for some other transgression, keep their jobs and can run their schools however they darn well please.