Unresponsive Principal

[Anonymous]

What is this a version of the cartoon Chip and Dale? Do you want a massive amount of thank you, no-thank you and sincerely your responses.

As being part of your job, one has to decipher what is worthy a response and move on. If you sent it by email, the activate your acknowledge read component on your computer and let it serve as the response needed,welcome or not.

[Anonymous]

Welcome to public school. Expect great things, receive next to nothing...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Welcome to public school. Expect great things, receive next to nothing...

Or expect realistic things, be pleasantly surprised sometimes, sadly disappointed others.

But c'mon, OP's original expectation was pretty unreasonable, so that's what someone gets for expecting the moon when they know that even styrofoam moons are hard to come by around here.

[Anonymous]

OP, you should consider applying to private school and ask for financial aid if you cannot swing the cost in full. What you are expecting is not unreasonable and would never happen in a private school environment. I like my kids public school and thought most teachers were good, a few mediocre that needed to retire. The principal seemed pretty responsive at the beginning of the year but as the year progressed, I found that he did not respond to emails and I was very strategic about when I sent emails to the principal because I respect their time and level of responsibility. But, as a tax paying citizen in DC, I expect teachers and administrators to answer emails or return calls. That is so very basic especially if you have some screen time throughout the day. I would get emails from teachers during their breaks and at night. So, 17:06 is accepting of poor service delivery by educators. I applied out to private school because of the smaller classes, individualized instruction when needed, interesting curriculum and extracurriculars, diversity of thought, diminished focus on standardized testing which is wasteful and does not develop critical thinking skills. I could go on but hopefully you get the point.

[Anonymous]

Meant "liked" not "like"

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm not clear on what your issues are. It sounds like, from you examples, that you expected a thank you response to one email and for a response to something that the principal was cc'd on after the teacher (who you directed the email to) responded to your satisfaction.

If those are your expectations, you are definitely being high maintenance and you should let it go. At some point, email conversations end and expecting a busy principal to thank you when the conversation is done is a little needy. Also, in a 'cc email, why would you expect him to say anything unless he had something additional to add? If the teacher handled it well, he is informed and you can assume he is informed and onboard with the teacher's plan.

Now, if he is unresponsive when you ask a question that needs a content filled response, then you are not out of line. As PPs have pointed out, in that case, just schedule time and meet with him. Easy.