Smile

[SandraC]

I am SMILING at you all

Just needed a smile today and received lots, so I am passing them along to you! S

 

[sammi]

Right back at ya Sandra!

 

[disneyvacationmom]

Hi Sandra. Where ya been?

 

[TimNDansMom]

Hi Sandra! !

 

[SandraC]

HI! I've been battling the evil forces of the school council chair and her dasterly side kick Cruella.

I have three choices in front of me regarding the school council. First a brief history. Our school council chair is a puppet of the Principal, who isn't such a bad guy. But he likes mastering this puppet. The puppet chair is a bully. I have been playing with the idea of quitting school council due to her terrible treatment of me and some others on the school council. But before I could quit, another very important school council member quit. My son hasn't even started this school yet. I have 8 more years in the school. The Evil Queen only has 3 years remaining. So here are my choices.

(1) Quit and walk away ~ but I am not a quitter at heart.
(2) Stay, say nothing and fly under the radar ~ not really my style, but I could live with it.
(3) Stay and send the Principal the very well crafted letter I wrote about the bully in charge. The down side is that it could backfire and I'm looked at as the bad guy.

What do you think I should do?

S

 

[Baboo]

Hi Sandra!

Doen't the chair get voted in every year? How come the evil queen keeps getting elected? Won't anyone else run against her? I've been involved in one way or another with our PTA?Council for the past 12 years (since Michael was in JK ) and thankfully I've never had to deal with this type of thing to this degree. Acouple of years ago, when councils first became mandatory, the principal we had was very pushy and ended up sort of forcing us to do things we didn't really want to do, but it was easier than fighting over it. This past year, we had co-chairs that were good friends and they tended to over-run others at times. This year we have a different exec. and I'm looking forward to things being a little more peaceful (I hope). I think that in your case, I'd probably opt for #2 this year and maybe see about running for chair next year (or recruiting someone else to do it!) Surely if she's like this to others, people would be willing to vote for someone else.

 

[TimNDansMom]

A very good point, Kathy! I was on our School Council from 1997 to the end of 2001 (during my boys' senior elementary school years) and was Secretary during the last year. I still have the huge binder of notes and minutes from all the meetings over those 5 years, and I just checked back.

A new executive WAS voted on for each year. The elections used to be in the early fall, but it was changed to June, so that the new executive was already in place for the next school year. The last year I was there we also had co-chairs, mainly because there was such a large amount of correspondence from the ministry to go through and no one at the time felt they had enough time to devote to it all. I guess we were lucky, because everyone got along very well with each other, during my years there.

The only thing I noticed during my last year, when we became part of the larger Thames Valley District School Board which included London and our school changed from grades 6 to 8 to JK to 8, was that the new principal (who transferred from a jr. elementary school) and the large number of new parent members seemed to dwell a lot on the younger grades. Of course the school was going through many changes to accomodate these younger grades including fund-raising for new playground equipment.

I was kind of glad that it was my younger son's last year there, before moving on the high school. So far I have only gone to meetings at the high school as an interested parent and have not joined the council.

I also pm'd you, Sandra.