this week's lessons

1. Security is an illusion.

School friends find themselves inexplicably unemployed. Their positions still exist, but their contracts were not renewed, and no reason was given (to them, or to us) for their dismissal. I'm hoping that something can be done about this, but realistically I don't know how it will work out.

2. If you're doing something you feel compelled to keep secret, that's your conscience letting you know that what you're doing is wrong.

I'm not talking about a surprise party or a gift. Those friends, now unemployed? Management canned them without warning and with well-planned, sneaky timing. They hoped it would stay under the radar and they could later say the staff "left for personal reasons." Yes, I suppose not being offered a contract is a "personal" reason.

I know Management would say, "we didn't want to upset the other staff," but that should have been another big clue that what they were doing was wrong: of course the rest of the staff would be outraged, and very, very nervous about their own ongoing status. This was not the kind of maneuver that leads to one big happy school family.

I can't think of a single thing that Management could say that could justify this decision. I can think of a few reasons, like personal dislike or wanting to bring in friends or something like that, but not one of these rises to the level of justifying unraveling the structure of the school community as they have done with these dismissals.

Apologies for the cryptic language; circumstances warrant it.