...wishing forced happy birthdays

This post was first written and published in March (I believe) of 2010. I was pressured by administration to remove it in 2012.  5 years later, the underlying feelings still exist, and so I'm reuploading it since I have nothing to worry about from administrative pressures nor does anyone read this blog any more.  It remains one of my favorite posts I've written for this blog.
 
Doña Berta is International School's matriarch. She founded the school and is the superintendent. Today I received this e-mail from my principal (Doña Berta's daughter-in-law):

"Today is Doña Berta's birthday. Her email is ____________ if you want to send her a note."

O...K? I don't think I've explained the family-business, kiss-the-ring mentality that really pervades the atmosphere of this school, making me view this message as much more comical than my readers might. Allow me to clarify: IST IS indeed a family business. Doña Berta founded the school, her architect husband designed the buildings, and her children and in-laws populate the upper echelons of the school hierarchy. IST, while a private, Christian institution, is also a FOR-PROFIT school, at the same time as being one of the most expensive schools in the country, (I might add that teachers here make around 500 dollars a month). Admittedly, it's also one of the best schools in the country (a fact that frightens me so much about the quality of education in this country, but that is another post altogether), but the sheer amount of revenue coming in from tuition for the over 1000 students here simply must outweigh the amount paid to us teachers and the even lower-paid cleaning women and maintenance men. I have not seen Doña Berta's house, but I hear it is breathtaking.

Now, I know that teachers aren't renowned for the size of their paychecks, even more in a third-world country, and that as someone who created the institution, Doña Berta deserves to enjoy some dividends. But Doña Berta has not even been around the school since Christmas - she's spent almost the entire time in Miami. Again, there are familial things I know nothing of going on, but still, no superintendent would take two and a half months away from their post in any school system I'd met before this year. And yet there's this sense of reverence around Doña Berta which I don't understand. With focus on family-first staffing, making money rather than ensuring increasing quality of education (family members are not always the most qualified to develop curriculum or whatever else they do in their air-conditioned offices all day), I as a teacher feel very lost in the shuffle.

So I won't be sending any birthday greetings today.