Misspelled Sign May Have Cost Paterson Principal Her Position
PATERSON, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- Some serious misspellings on a school sign may have cost a principal her position.
It's prominently positioned over the entryway at Paterson's Public School Number 20, but it took more than a week for anyone to take notice and fix the glaring mistakes on the school's sign.
As CBS2's Vanessa Murdock reported, the controversial sign included misspellings of the words 'December' and 'reports' which were spelled 'Dicember' and 'reepor' respectively. The number '1' was also backwards.
"How horrible. How are you going to teach the kids? How are you going to teach the kids when you can't spell the simple month of December?" Betty Mack said.
It took a Facebook for someone to actually bring it to the school's attention. That someone was parent and Paterson Board of Education member Corey Teague.
At first, Teague thought the picture was fake.
"At first I didn't believe it was, i thought it was PhotoShopped or something," Teague said.
When he found out it was the real deal, he became angry.
"We can't assume because it's an urban district -- inner-city -- that things like this can be swept over. If it were a suburban neighborhood parents would be outraged, disgusted," Teague said.
Teague's goal is to make sure that no sign posted on a Paterson school looks like this one again, but there may have been more fallout than intended. The principal, Antoinette Young, was reassigned.
The district wouldn't confirm that the misspellings were the reason for her move, and some parents said the principal shouldn't take the fall for someone else's misspellings.
"They don't talk about all the good things she's done with the kids. We're sad to see her go," Linda Martinez said.
A district spokesperson told CBS2 that Principal Young has been reassigned as a vice principal to another school.
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