The Problem

Use of telephones to coerce, in violation of policies and guidelines

Despite written guidance from CPS affirming that the district is only asking--not requiring--school administrators to report to work during the COVID-19 district shutdown, CPAA has received several reports of chiefs violating those guidelines today in their verbal communications with principals and assistant principals. Unfortunately, this behavior is not new. At CPAA we've seen this pattern of network chief behavior before. It typically goes as follows:

• Whether they're violating the guidelines on their own or being encouraged to violate them by district leadership, central office and network staff almost always use direct phone calls and conference calls to carry out these unethical and sometimes illegal efforts to get school leaders to capitulate.
• They use phone calls rather than emails so that their unethical and sometimes illegal actions are not documented.

How to Respond

Document the call with a confirmation email

Whenever a supervisor uses the telephone to give you a questionable directive, immediately send the supervisor a respectfully worded email to "confirm" that you understood what (s)he said correctly.

For example, one of the concerns we heard today was about a chief who allegedly told all admin in her network that they must report to school during the COVID-19 closures, that they must use benefit days if they don't report, and that they were to be in their schools from 8:00 to 2:00 for the entire two weeks. All of these were undocumented verbal directives that were contradictory to the documented written ones. In response, each of those school leaders should send the chief a respectfully worded email like the one below.

Dear Chief Pempletush
I'm writing to confirm the understanding I took away from the conference call. If I understood everything you said correctly, principals and AP's must report during the COVID-19 school closings because we are essential staff, and if we don't report during the shutdown we must use a benefit day. Additionally, you said we must be there every day for the entire two weeks from 8:00 to 2:00 PM. Is that an accurate representation of your directives?

Very Respectfully,

Principal Brian Johnson