Sticky Issues
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Sticky Issues Archive >
In this section, principals tell how they handled a challenging situation, how some policy that was in place actually worked, and the lessons learned from dealing with these Sticky Issues. Send your stories to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
Levy, Levy, Levy
It was May and our third attempt at passing an operating levy. Cuts loomed large and nasty. Finally the official word came that the levy had passed and we would be OK—for a while at least.
I never know exactly how these stresses affect people in our building. Of course, we tried to shelter the children from the tension we felt, but we never quite know how effective we are. The day after the levy passed, I had a happy incident with one little fellow who had finally earned his recess back. I wanted his teacher to be able to give him the good news, so I told her to tell him. On his way out that afternoon, I asked him, “Did you hear the good news?” He replied, “Yea, the levy passed!” I guess that was better news to him than even getting his recess back.
So how do you deal with the ups and downs your staff feels when going through such a horrendous year? We had support staff whose positions would be cut, and we had at least one first year teacher who would be laid off.
One way we dealt was to get involved in the levy campaign as teams, and as much as we could. Each levy attempt brought new and more efforts, so we got organized and sometimes worked as tag teams to get areas canvassed, phone calls made, letters written. We got over feeling unappreciated by those who seemed to vote “against us” by getting our story out. As the situation became more serious with each defeat, we felt increasingly more support as our local community really did rally with us. Finally we were doing something that was positive, useful, and self-actualizing. We knew we were all about kids, and we did a good job telling people that.
Of course, there continued to be that fear of what might happen to our school family. When the projected layoffs became official information and I needed to tell the individual staff members, it was really tough. It would probably have been tougher if I had not laid some groundwork which included the following:
- I kept everyone as up to date as I could, sharing all the information that was available to me and that was appropriate to share.
- We had to wait quite a while until official seniority lists were published, but if I was certain that a staff member would be affected, I had an individual talk with him/her just to make sure he/she was aware that he/she could very well be affected.
- Our Central Office did an excellent job of being sensitive to these possible layoff situations. Administrative personnel came to inform teachers individually that they were on the layoff list. Even before that happened, CO would let me know that it was going to happen so that I could do some private talks ahead of those visits too. Even so, I needed to make sure that we had coverage for those teachers when CO visited since it was a very emotional experience, and they needed time to get composed before they could go back to their classes.
- When the levy did pass, I called those teachers late that Tuesday night so that they could be relieved just as soon as possible. One teacher even responded, “Are you sure?” Passage was strong enough that there were not enough outstanding votes to be able to sway the outcome to the negative, so I was confident when I said, “Yes, I am sure!” What a great feeling!
We did all survive that tough year and are closer and stronger as a staff probably because of it. Unfortunately, given the funding situation in Ohio, we will be challenged again with these kinds of circumstances in the near future.
Basically, we need to remember the “human-ness” of the whole situation. As the building leader, I felt overwhelmed by the possible losses to the building capacity to provide for the educational experiences of the students. It took purposeful effort for me to remember that members of my staff were facing major losses to their personal lives. That awareness, by my whole staff, really made the difference.
