Principal removed from school for being too mean

Emily DeCosta, principal at Lahainaluna High School in Maui, Hawaii, has been temporarily transferred to a different role within her local school board after she gave students a not so textbook example of how a school year opening assembly should go down.

She starts off the assembly in a stern tone, telling students to quiet down. A little abrupt, but nothing we haven’t seen before. Things go downhill from there. DeCosta tells students, “please put your phones away...or it becomes mine”, drawing a chorus of jeers and boos from the students. Then, just past the three-minute mark of the footage, things seem to take at least a bit of a positive tone…until the principal starts threatening to take away Senior Banquet and Junior Prom. That was just downright mean.

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How mean was it? So much so that the video now has over 30,000 views and parents have come together to put together a petition with over 1,000 signatures on it to have the leadership at the high school changed on a permanent basis.

This instance of a principal being way too harsh on high school students who seemed to be doing nothing but creating the same old pre-assembly ruckus we all grew up around makes me wonder if there are principals and teachers out there who get away with way worse and just didn’t have their mean ways uploaded for all to see.

I’m sure many of us can think of at least one principal or teacher from back in the day that reminds us of Ms. DeCosta.

Let’s keep it real though. At the end of the day Principal DeCosta may indeed be a very good one. She was after all the leader of the school’s administration dating back to 2010. It’ll be interesting to see whether the school board ever gives her another shot at being a principal somewhere else. Only time will tell.

For now though one thing is for sure. The nicest interim principal in North America now resides in Maui. It better be that way or she might get transferred too! Then again, that would be awful mean of us to do now wouldn’t it?