Stop the Bullying at the Top

I have so many other things I should be doing right now. My desk is a mess and I have bills to pay. But I’m writing this now because I have put it off for so long.  When I first got back from law school, a few years ago, when my son swam on the Attleboro High School swim team, I sat next to a woman at a swim meet who identified herself as a teacher in Attleboro. 

We started talking about the school system and how it had changed the few years I had been away at school. She started in on such a tale of woe about how the current school superintendent would call teachers into her office and berate them, even screaming at some of them till they cried, and I was stunned.

I assured her that I would do everything in my power to make sure that that didn’t happen, couldn’t and wouldn’t happen again and if I ever saw her do anything like that I would stand up to her. 

That was in the fall of 2008. Since then it has been easy to look the other way and go about my life not worrying about what principal has been humiliated in front of other people or who was in fear of his or her job if they spoke out.

I’m not connected with the school department. I’m a city councilor. And, yes, she does come before the council on occasion with her 20 pages of large print that have absolutely no substantive facts on them but is that enough to take her to task over? 

It wasn’t until the past six month that I have seen now how so many good people in school upper management have left that I am reminded of my promise to that teacher at the swim meet sometime ago. 

People talk and some of the very good people who have left have said specifically that they would not have looked for a new job elsewhere had the school superintendent been nicer and kinder to work for.

Nicer…..kinder….these are words that we teach our children. These are words that we want them to know and to live. One principal who was leaving was worried about another one who was staying because of the person’s fragile health. The principal said that our school superintendent was so verbally abusive that it greatly impacted another principal’s health.

Another teacher I spoke to this morning said that she feared that the damage being done to our school system was irreparable. What can be done? The Attleboro School Committee is divided so badly that even if one side or the other agreed with each other privately it seems that they would rather fall on swords publicly because the rifts have gotten so personal. 

I confess here that know and admire people on both sides…..both sides…..And what sides would those be?  Pro-Pia or Anti-Pia? I am anti-abusive behavior and pro-kindness and civility.  That’s what I am. And as long as our school system suffers from verbal abuse our entire community will suffer because school leadership starts at the top.  

Leadership sets the tone and leads the way.That means that if the leaders at the top are behaving badly how can we expect our children to emulate anything better? How can we pay lip service to kindness and civility in public only to scream and humiliate each other privately? And how can our schools improve with such hemorrhaging of talent? People judge an entire community on a school system, let’s not kid ourselves.

We all have a vested interest in seeing it move in a positive direction. I think that people need to come forward and be heard to say: Let the bullying at the top stop, NOW.