Over the weekend, the math teacher had been dismissed, and the rest of the faculty only learned on Monday, when the vice principal introduced his replacement. He had written his own resignation, and he insisted to anyone, when he was willing to talk, that it had been his decision. But everyone knew he had been pressured; they only wondered what it was that kept him silent.
His replacement had never taught before, but he dressed better, had more self-confidence, and for once math classes appeared silent and busy. But others began to compare the school’s well-advertised hiring standards to the new teacher’s local college diploma, and wondered how he had such an in.
Then they asked what the old teacher had done. There were only rumors and they were easily denied. There had never been complaints or warnings, his students’ test scores were up to standards, in short nothing had been recorded against him, but he was gone.
Political minds reasoned: if the principal had wanted him removed, he would have prepared the ground and avoided the current morale problem. He never made sudden decisions. Therefore it had to have come from higher up.
Someone found out the new teacher had been tutor to a powerful family, and this fact was eagerly seized upon. Only a tutor is not a strong position. And, telling with an open expression of a late phone call the Saturday before his first day, the new teacher seemed the most bewildered of all.