Julie:

I hate to corroborate it, but this is very true.

"And she had to decide if she was willing to sacrifice her vocation and what was obviously for her an avocation (she is a passionate teacher)"

Here are a couple of thoughts that a teacher, with or without tenure, has to consider:

1. If I get fired from here, where will I go?
-administrators form a tight group of "good old boys" (even if they're all women) who will often "blackball" a teacher whose been fired. To hire a teacher fired from a neighboring district puts an administrator in a "Judas" position. So now, when you find someone willing to hire a "black sheep", you may be exchanging a 10 minute commute for a 40 minute commute in order to get out of the admin's "territory".

2. Once you find a school who will hire you despite the "blackball", what "step" will they place you on?

Teachers are paid on a step system. Loosely, one step equals one to three years of experience. Pay is attached to the step. The lower the step, the lower the pay. Administration places a new hire on whatever level they please. A new hire has no tenure, so the union is powerless to negotiate individual salaries. (Example: where I am now, I entered with 17 years experience. 10 of those years they denied right away because they were in the private therapy sector. Of the remaining 7, they credited me with 5 years only, as two of the seven years experience were public school experience, but in a different state. So, I am a therapist with 17 years experience, on step 5. That places me 12 YEARS further down the ladder for retirement, seniority and retirement bennies.) I accepted it because it was the only way to get my foot in the door.....it's a different thing alltogether when you're talking about losing steps, money, seniority and years to retirement for someone else.

3. When you leave a district and go to another, you may very well lose your tenure, meaning you are vulnerable to being let go "without explanation".

If you are very well connected with the Board of Ed or witin the town, you can sometimes negotiate to get away with a "better deal", but do you want to leave a place where you are well-connected (which has perks for everything from materials for your classroom to where you park to where you are placed on the step system)

So, bottom line: if you are unhappy with being a teacher in that district , adn think you can be "better-treated" down the road or in another county or another state or even another career, then these drawbacks to "speaking your mind" may not seem such a big deal.

But it is a very, very hard decision for the vast majority of teachers. And consider that most teachers have husbands and children they are responsible to, also. It's one thing to be single and fly the flag of justice and crusade; it's much different when you have to go home and tell your husband he will have to work overtime to make up for whatever steps/pay you will use. Or to tell your children they won't get that present/vacation/extra they were counting on because you have to "do the right thing".

There's a lot more that goes into teacher-administration conflicts than meets the public eye.....

I don't know Lulu's history, but I wanted to comment that there is at least ONE school where the principal and staff is totally supportive--mine. I work with the RSP kids, from kids with vision impairments to Asperger's to autism to seizure disorders, emotional disturbances, and learning disabilities. Most of the day, the kids are in the general ed classroom. The principal will order me anything I need, if I can make a case for it and show how it supports the kids. ie She ordered close to $2000 worth of material for my program this year. We start early on to analyze why a particular student seems to be struggling, while also trying to pinpoint their strengths. The principal and teacher work closely with the parents (our population is very leery of coming to school meetings for the most part). Kids aren't referred willy-nilly for testing, but their needs are also not ignored. The principal included four articles in the staff handbook that I had sent to her about learning disabilities, homework, and modifying a child's classroom environment. The district inclusion specialist came to a meeting and told us we were light years ahead of most schools she had worked with. When the district reviewed IEP compliance this summer, our school was one of a few that had no problems with the paperwork, the parents, etc. If you can't tell, I love my job (despite all the paperwork, of which there is an immense amount!)