The people responsible for helping our kids avoid bullying say they were being bullied themselves. Several teachers reached out to 13 Action News saying their school principal is bullying them.
"I folded up a chair and I put it up to my door because I thought that maybe she was going to send somebody to my place," said Rachael Gore, through tears.
Gore said after being harassed, she became afraid of what her then-principal at Clyde Cox Elementary would do to her. She said it started at the beginning of the school year.
"She said that school was beginning, there was professional development beginning, that I needed to report to work," Gore said. "My response was that because I did not have a contract I could not report to work yet. Her response was that she would get me paid as a sub."
Gore said she started her job and worked for a week before she got a contract. But when she got it, the contract was not back dated to her first day of work.
"I talked to my school principal and asked her, 'when would I get that pay,' and she said, 'it's going to be on your September check.'"
According to Gore, the money was not on her September check, and as more months passed she still did not get that week of pay. She made recordings on her iPad of her principal promising she would be paid. But when she told the principal about the recordings, Gore said things escalated.
"She was like, 'I need you to give the police officer the password to the iPad, I need you to hand over all those recordings,'" Gore remembered.
Gore said the officer talked to her or came to her classroom for several days.
"It happened the first day, it happened the second day, it happened the third day," she said. "She even told me she was going to ping my iPad."
Gore got scared for her safety and her child and left the district.
"The motto at our school is 'cubs have our back' but it's more like 'cubs have their claws in our back,'" said Daphne Sauceda, another teacher from Clyde Cox Elementary.
Sauceda said she was subjected to similar treatment. She is an outgoing teacher and said the principal tried to push her out.
13 Action News reached out to the Clark County School District. Their spokeswoman said they cannot discuss details of specific teachers who have left. They gave us the following statement:
"Unfortunately, we are not going to have all our teachers stay with the Clark County School District, however teachers who are not satisfied with their administration do have the option to transfer to another school.
"It is recommended that all teachers who are considering a job at a school research and interview the school's administrators to ensure that their philosophies and development goals align with that of the administration.
"While we cannot discuss details of specific teachers at Clyde Cox who have left we can confirm that two licensed staff (a digital coach and instructional coach) who had this elementary as one of their many sites chose Cox as their permanent site to teach. Furthermore, while year-end assessments are not available we can say that 89.6% of first through third grade students at Cox grew in their reading assessment between the beginning and middle of the school year.
"Additionally, CCSD has an attrition rate of 7.1 percent which is below the national average and below that of other large urban school districts. While we aim to retain all our good teachers, we also have to respect the standards and expectations the school administrators put in place to improve the academic achievement of their specific student population."
The district also invited us to speak with two other teachers they chose, but they did not give us enough time before our deadline to do so. Instead they sent us another statement:
“I am a new teacher to CCSD. The administration at Clyde Cox Elementary School has been with me all the way through my transition. The administration has an open door policy and are there whenever I need anything. Staff is treated like family. It is a very collaborative environment, where all my questions get answered right away.” - Brooke Owen, 3rd grade teacher at Clyde Cox Elementary School.
