;old boys’ club at work. They simply do not want to give women top jobs even in elementary schools,” she said. When you go up to the Middle School level, the disparity worsens. Of the eight middle schools I visited, six had male principals while the teaching staff was fairly evenly divided. From what I could surmise from the conversations with teachers and administrators, there is no good reason for the disparate male/female ratio in the building administration, except the continuing resistance against women.A veteran teacher told me that in all his memory he could not think of one female principal in any of the five South Bend public high schools. In the 1998-1999 school year, however, there are three female principals, a majority! But, they are relatively new appointments, two of them only a year ago and the third just this year, but she is only an acting principal. A female superintendent who is also relatively new made these appointments, though they were not very popular. As a result, one of the regular appointees has tended her resignation, the second is on the verge of doing so, and the acting principal’s fate is hanging in the balance.One of the school staff related to me the reception the acting principal received when she came to take charge of the school and for a few weeks thereafter. To start with, she was appointed at the last minute, as a last resort when none of the candidates the school system offered the job to accepted it. When she came to the building for the first time, very few faculty persons greeted her. One of the two vice principals, a male who had applied for the principal’s job unsuccessfully, greeted her sitting on his chair and with his feet on his desk. He arrogated the principal’s authority to himself, calling faculty meetings, making policy decisions, addressing the school community through the public address system and complaining to the corporate administration ...
