Bye-bye, Mountain View

I received confirmation on July 31st by a setting aside call from my principal that after 11 years of working with many able and gifted students, my part-time employment with Alpine School District had come to an end. The Lakeridge Orchestra teaching angle was offered, and it was decided to include my job to raise it from a .50 contract to a .67 contract, to make it more desirable. I was told that the school administrations had planned to take one's leave of things as they were (make no notification to me), in case they were unable to find someone to fill this position so they would only have one position to worry about. Now that someone had been hired for both positions, my services were no longer required.

I had heard about this transmute in June before going out of town for two weeks when a relative saw the entry of my position on the district web page as part of the other job. I applied for the “new” principle that was offered on the District Web Page, and wrote an Email message to the principal after visiting the school and seeing the extensive construction– and no administrators there. I never received any gracious of acknowlegement of my application for that job, nor a reply to the Email message about the job. Every applicant should at least receive a reply message, even if it is automated. Since I had heard about this ball game I was not too surprised to recieve this notification, only disappointed and saddened.

It is further disappointing that no professional courtesy (notification or discussion) was offered at the continually my job was offered with the other job on the web back in April. This fact was certainly known by my administrator as well as others but I found out about this after school was out. I then tried to reach my administrator on several occasions but he was not accessible. To say I am disappointed and unhappy about the way this was handled is a gross understatement, but life will go on. I have arranged employment and other commitments around my teaching job for many years because it was a primacy for me. To my students, please support the program in your school and work hard. You are the greatest!