Surprise!

So, Craig started at his new job on Friday!

Yeah, I guess I didn't mention that on ye olde blogge, did I?

That was mostly on purpose-- we weren't supposed to talk about it until it went public.  And it didn't go public until we were at Disney World, and then I've been too busy since then to blog about it.  But yes, Craig has a new job now: He is an Assistant Principals at Albemarle High School here in Charlottesville.

Here's the good in all this:

1) He no longer works with his evil evil boss.  That's probably the biggest thing.  She had such a nasty, soul-sucking way of running everything, I'm so relieved for him to be away from her and out from under her thumb.  (She is now "consulting" for CATEC, which I think means that they'll let her go as soon as the new administrators realize just how incompetent and toxic she is?  Come to think of it, I'm not sure how she's lasted beyond Day 1!  Maybe the 4th of July holiday threw them off...)

2) Albemarle High School is a great school, kind of the pride of the school district.  So this is a perfect opportunity for Craig to learn from what they're doing right here and be part of their success.

3)  The superintendent over the county was named superintendent of the year for Virginia schools, so working for her will be a great opportunity for Craig.

4)  This job feels like a real career track position.  When Craig was informed that he would no longer be at CATEC next year, we were really scared that the superintendents might place him in some dead-end job for a year and then let him go (which is what they're doing to his boss, I think).  That would have been terrifying.  But this job doesn't feel like that at all-- it's exactly where he would want to go next.  In fact...

5)  This seems to be the next step after CATEC.  One of CATEC's previous directors worked as director for 7 years and then became AP at Monticello High School (which is right next to us, but not quite as good of a school), so Craig sort of jump-started that next step by only being at CATEC for a year...

6)  For you nosy types (because I'm one, I assume most everyone else is, too), salary and benefits all stayed the same.  Phew-- We won't have to go looking for a smaller house to squeeze into!



The bad about all this (because nothing is ever perfect) would be:

1) Craig really wanted to stay at CATEC (provided his evil boss was gone) and see what he could do with the place.  He was disappointed to not get to follow through with the many plans he had for the school.

1a)  We're a little worried that Craig being at CATEC for only one year will not look great on his resume.  But hopefully things will go well at his new school and that one blip on his resume can fade into the background.

2)  Until we realized that his evil boss was also being replaced, we had a feeling that she had "won" and we had "lost."  Now that we know she's (most likely) on the way out, we're less concerned with that.  The feeling we're getting is that the superintendents were tired of everyone complaining about the boss and decided to teach everyone a lesson by letting both Craig and his boss go, showing the staff that they couldn't tell the superintendents what to do.  Or something?  So Craig was sort of caught up in all that even though none of it was really his fault. 

3)  The commute is a few minutes longer, but not much.

4)  As an AP at a regular school with sports teams and all that stuff, Craig will have much busier evenings than he's had.  He'll be required to attend all home football games, for example.  I'm hoping that I can manage to bring the kids and meet up with him for a bit, but we'll see how that goes.  This will certainly be something we have to figure out as we go.  And I may have to start to pretend to like football again...  (Although who am I kidding-- if I'm trying to keep five kids happy, there's no way I'll see any of the game anyway!)


So I think that's it for now!  Wish Craig well on his new job!  Friday morning (his first day) he sent me a text that he'd had a meeting that only lasted for an hour and was quite thrilled about that, so I think we're off to a good start!