Kismich, I think it goes without saying that all people have a din cheshbon regardless of where you work. If a person were to choose a field outside of chinuch world, that should not be put down or looked at in any deragotory way. However, when onr chooses to go into the field of Chinuch there is a higher standard that must follow. I can’t see anyway around it. This is the foundation of education and the representation of what Yiddishkeit means to our children. When children (of all ages) see someone in chinuch doing something wrong, it is associated with how they see the torah. In a kids eyes, if a principal can yell at a morah then it must be that Derech eretz not important. While we can’t expect them to be malachim, they still need to be accountable for their actions or at least have remorse and do their best that the negative are not repeated.
In this light there are terrible things happening and the end result is that the image of chinuch is devalued in the process. Right now in Lakewood there are girls going into 9th grade that don’t have a school to go to. As the story goes there were too many applicants in one particular school and many girls didn’t put down a second choice. So while this is going on several girls did apply to the other schools and were rejected due to lack of space. However, they just re-opened up the regestration to accoomidate those girls but yet still don’t have a place for those girls who did apply? These girls were highly respected in their classes but since their families are not the typical black hat types they are rejected. What kind of message is that? These girls are willing to live up to the standards that are set by the school system but are not given the chance to even try.
I’m fortuanate to be able to send my kids to a school that does have moral standings. They make sure that they are honest when dealing with the government (they give an exact count of which kids get lunch from the government and when a kid is apsent they don’t mark him down). They treat they rebbiem and morahs with the highest level of respect and it filters down to the students.
It is up to us, the parent body to make sure the right image is given. Are we more woried about how many pusikim are covered that year or that derech eratez kodmo l’torah? Instead of worrying about which types of students get in we should be worried of what types of students will come out of our schools.