beignets;132964 wrote: by the way, a 'bad reputation' is nothing to talk to the prinicpal about. bad reps are based on rumor and are worthless in the arena of 'complaining to admin about a teacher'
one needs hard FACTS to gripe about a teacher or any staff.

if your gripe is not solid based on fact, chances are you might do yourself and kids more harm than good making a big deal of it. you will simply get labelled by the admin.

let those parents, who really have had a negative experience they can document, go complain.

I agree with this post. . .in fact, I just gave the same advise to someone today who was listening to negative gossip about two new teachers. I suggested that rather than listen to gossip, which is so often rooted in personal agendas, this parent should wait and make her own decision when her child is in that class.


I used to hear horror stories about how mean this one teacher was. . until I worked in the office one day and saw that she was just not tolerating bad behavior. . from kids or their parents. She was professional, but held her ground. If you treated her respectfully, she was awesome with both students and parents who did so. Two sides to every story. Go by what you see, not what you hear.

We had a situation this year where a teacher, who brought out mixed reviews for over 20 years, was suddenly no longer working for the school. As president of our school's parent group--I heard both sides of the "story" from witnesses regarding the supposed issue that led to the teacher's departure. .but there was nothing I could, or should have done in my role-much to the chagrin of some parents. The fact is, it was a personnel decision of which NO ONE outside of the administration had a right to know all the details--for legal and confidentiality reasons (If you were a terminated employee, would you want your former bosses to share all the details? Come on. People can sue for that.). In the end, my role ended up being trying to explain that to parents and trying to take the heat off of the administration. Unfortunately, too many of parents thought they were entitled to know the details and several months later, there are still divisions.

Several years ago, we had another teacher who was reassigned to a home room class after teaching a speciality course. She was not the strongest disciplinarian, not overly organized, not very strong in some critical subjects, and she had a tough class of kids for her first year. There were a number of parents calling for her head, practically, and others with kids in the upcoming class who were hearing the horror stories and reconsidering re-registration until the issues in question were resolved. In this case, the parent group asked the administration to have a meeting to discuss the concerns and they did meet, got details and tried to work with the teacher, while continuing to get feedback from the parents who had children in the class as to the progress. The problem was, we had parents who were only going to be happy if she was terminated. In the end, she was reassigned to teaching something that was more within her core skills, and she has been doing very well there since.

I'd say--bring up your concerns about her style and make sure they're addressed, but trust the administration to look into it and make a decision that is in the best interest of the students. And whatever the decision is--remember it's HR related--and therefore, as parents, we're not entitled to know all the details.

It's funny. As a President I go out of my way to try to separate school assignments and issues from PTO business, though often these things come up at the meeting. During the PTO meetings I give the Principal a time to provide a Principal's Report. Normally this is just stuff such as "MCAS testing is coming up next week" or "The School Council has set up for an after school second language club". Sometimes though he will discuss hot topics such as this. Last meeting he explained how next year a really respected second grade teacher is transitioning up to 3rd grade and how a fourth grade teacher is shifting down to first, and also how the school will be looking for a full day Kindergarten teacher for the new full day K class that starts up next year. This sparked some discussion about how exactly the twenty Kindergarten students are going to be selected and how this lottery system is going to include certain percentages of males, females, SPED and reduced lunch. This of course took the PTO meeting off topic, but for something like this I feel that if the Principal wishes to discuss it then that is ok, as long as it doesn;t get out of hand. Only once this year did I have to pull in the reins and cut the topic off saying that we have a lot of business to conduct tonight and that if anyone has any firther questions they should contact the Principal at a later time.

So, as far as the topic possibly being discussed at a PTO meeting, that is more of a Principal's decision, as long as it doesn't take up too much time. Hopefully your Principal would feel comfortable stating "call to set up an appointment" if this was something that he/she would not want to discuss at that time. But as far as "getting involved" I would say not.

Good luck,
PresidentJim

As a whole PTO...NO as an individual parent you can address your principal, school board, superintendent if you would like. If parents are so upset when they mention it to you tell them to contact a school board member, one parent complaining isnt as powerful as a whole mess so it is important that parents speak their concerns if they are that upset.
The whole other part to this is does this teacher have tenure? I am sure that she went through alot to get hired so are these real problems or is she just not as nice as the other teachers? Those are questions to ask?

"Should PTO Get Involved in Controversial Teacher Assignment?" - in a word, NO!

more often than not, rumors about so called 'bad' teachers, are started (unintentioanlly) by a parent that had a bad run in with a teacher. the teahcer might be great, but there was a bad match between one parent and the teahcer, and there you have the start of the grapevine mill that often turns to gossip and innuendo and can do lots of damage.

stick with the facts, and dont listen to gossip about 'bad' teachers. one of our 'worst' teachers in the rumor mill also has turned out to better than some of the 'star' teachers. its all a matter of perspective, experince, personality, and loose lips of parents.

the prinipcal surely knows how any one teacher is performing. let the prinicpal do theier job. you can give them input, but let them handle the staff matters. the gossip just doesnt matter one bit.