It turns out our assistant principal completely misrepresented the gist of next year’s teaching contract to me in a one on one meeting. The principal admits she was wrong, told her I was right, etc. I’m still pretty steamed about it. The math teacher was in real business for over 20 years, a dept. head for Mitsubishi for about 14 years, and said he’d fire her over orally superseding a contract she was by definition negotiating with me by the act of handing it to me.
She still hasn’t apologized or said anything to me about it except to email me back and say that she simply doesn’t see what I mean, when belieeeeeeve me, the clauses are obvious to a 9th grader. Seriously.
I’ll settle for, “I misread the contract, which was my responsibility to do accurately. I’m sorry for telling you the wrong thing. I will fully read and understand the teaching contracts in the future.” This alone would be progress for her, just the act of admitting she could be wrong and have completely fumbled the ball.
In your experience (you are not my lawyer, I am not your client), what kinds of ethical or legal rules has she broken? I’m willing to go to HR and bring this up and see what they say. I think that for all his talk, the principal is hoping to just smooth this over and just have it go away.
If push comes to shove, oral contracts are worth exactly what they are written on. Unless you have witnesses, it becomes a case of he said, she said. You got her boss to admit that she fucked up. Take your small victories and be happy.
It’s hard to assess this one without more information - was her misinformation on a trivial or significant matter? Did what she said harm you in any way? When she misrepresented the contract to you, did you have your own copy so you could read it too? Since it seems that she is continuing to misconstrue the contract, is there a potential for further damage to be done (i.e., she will tell others the wrong thing and they may act in ways they should not)?
From what you’ve said, it sounds like your feeling is “the woman is a stupid jerk and my own sense of justice would be served if she were forced to acknowledge this.” Okay, but what’s the point, really? Would some goal be reached besides fulfilling your desire for vengeance?
I don’t have a witness, but I do doubt if she’d be willing to completely flout her testimony about the contract.
The point she was completely wrong on was whether or not the school board/ charter school could terminate a teacher without cause. Her: " The new headmaster wants to send the message to the teachers that they will have a job for the next year."
But the actual contract says the board only owes one month’s salary for terminating without cause.
I’m kind of hoping to get a special contract, like when I filled their open Science position in the 2nd quarter of the year, when I was the only applicant, and the previous one was a rolling disaster.
You won’t get it by pissing off the administration. The number of business contracts that we just have stopped executing before they were finally signed because the other side was too much bother and easily replaceable is not small.
Unless you are certain that the rest of the administration would like to see the assistant principal hung out to dry (and you’ll be surprised how fast they close ranks behind her even if they think she’s an idiot), you’d best just let it go.