I am soooo dumb! I’ve put one or two scams that we have been warned about onto this blog. I even went as far as asking our Head of Governors if she thought it was worth informing the school’s Head about one of them. She responded that she didn’t think that the Head was niaive enough to fall for anything like that. Because I’m so worried about rocking the boat and being a pain, I accepted this. Anyway, we’ve got an email this week from the Head saying that the driveway was retarmaced this holiday because there was someone repairing the road outside and they had some left-over tarmac. Turns out that they “had extra tarmac, so they did a lot more of the drive than they had already agreed”. It also cost four times more than was agreed. My internet connection has been somewhat shaky this week, so I came to the message after four or five governors had replied “Oh, don’t worry, am sure it looks nice” and “it needed doing anyway” and similar comments. My reaction was one of horror, as I’ve heard of people being caught out with their home front drives in this manner, so I went back to the website where it warns of these scams. Sure enough, this was the first scam that they reported on! Apparently laws have changed which makes it hard for these people to target homes, so they have turned their attention to businesses.
Now, I don’t feel that the Head should be held responsible for falling for this. But I am beginning to worry about how this whole governing body works. It is starting to seem to me that everyone is so worried about supporting the Head in everything that they are forgetting that their first responsibility is to the children. I want to stick my oar in and say that perhaps we should go to trading standards about it and see if we can get some of the money back – or at least report these cowboys to the council. But I feel like I am swimming through honey. Is it really worth upsetting other governors and our Head over something that is done and dusted? Or by not saying anything am I doing the kids a disservice and being an ineffective governor (like, it seems, many of my colleagues).