Charter school founder told me “You chose to have kids” and "you can't push this job to the side to stay home with sick kids" during my contract renewal meeting

Apologies for the length. I’m naturally wordy, and I feel like context matters here.

I work at a newer public charter school finishing its second year. There are definitely positives: smaller class sizes, generally motivated students, and good coworkers. However, the founder/president of the school is… a lot. Before I was even hired, multiple people either asked if I’d heard stories about her or flat-out told me, “You know she’s nuts, right?”

While we do have a principal, the founder/president controls contract renewals. At the end of each year, every teacher has to meet with her to discuss renewal. For some people it’s just a formality. For others, it’s genuinely stressful. We only have 10 teachers total, and two teachers were already informed they would not be renewed next year.

Going into my meeting, I knew my attendance would be an issue. I started the year with 15 sick days plus 2 personal days. I’m also a father of three young kids (9, 8, and 5). Anyone raising multiple children knows missed work comes with the territory. My kids don’t miss an unusual amount of school individually, but when you have three of them, the random sick days and appointments add up quickly.

My parents have health issues, and my in-laws still work full-time, so my wife and I alternate staying home when a child is sick. Add in yearly checkups, dentist appointments, and a few of my own medical appointments this year, and my absences climbed higher than normal.

At the time of the meeting, I had used 11.5 days total. About five of those days came from completely unprecedented situations for me in my 10-year teaching career, including multiple medical tests for myself and a sudden dog emergency that required immediate attention.

The meeting went terribly.

She told me my attendance was “unacceptable” and actually said, “You CHOSE to have kids.” She then said missing more than 3–4 days was unacceptable because “we are a small charter and don’t have the personnel to cover absent teachers.” Since we’re so small, we don’t even use a real sub service. Coverage usually falls on a para, the counselor, or the media specialist.

She also accused my wife and me of “taking advantage of the system” by using our sick days. I calmly explained that the overwhelming majority of those days were spent caring for sick children or being sick ourselves. She responded by saying my wife and I needed to hire an on-call nanny/babysitter or come up with a plan before she would renew my contract.

I explained that reliable emergency childcare would likely cost $150–$200 per day and that we simply could not afford that every time one of our kids got sick. She responded with, “You and your wife are both teachers, which means you make six figures combined, and six figures is enough to afford a nanny.”

For context, this is a woman in her 60s who never had children and lives a very comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle. I stayed calm externally, but internally I was furious. When you have three kids and a mortgage, you don’t have the luxury of saying everything you’d like to say.

We later had a follow-up meeting to discuss the “plan” my wife and I had supposedly come up with. I again explained we couldn’t afford on-call childcare. She then suggested it would be “cheaper” for my wife to use all of her sick days and then personally pay for substitutes after that.

She reiterated that if I missed more than 3–5 days next year, it would become a problem. I told her my mom might be more available to help with sick kids. She wanted more reassurance so...I lied and said my mother-in-law’s work schedule was changing and she’d be more available next year.

Then she hit me with this: “You can’t just treat this like some job and push it to the side so you can stay home with your kids.”

At that point I really had to bite my tongue, because I still didn’t have a renewed contract and couldn’t risk going into summer unemployed. The second I left that meeting, I started applying for any job in the area that I meet the certifcation requirements for. I’ve had a couple interviews so far but no offers yet. I’m hoping I can get out this summer, because I genuinely cannot handle the stress of worrying every single time one of my kids gets sick.

I do understand my absences were high this year (12.5 days so far), and I understand that creates challenges for a small school like ours. But being told that taking care of my children means I’m treating teaching like “just some job” really bothered me. And the implication that I should essentially prioritize my job over my own kids really left me seething.

TL;DR: I work at a tiny charter school where the founder controls contract renewals. I used 11.5 sick/personal days this year (out of 15 + 2 personal days available to me), mostly for sick kids, medical appointments, and a few unprecedented days due to my own health issues and a dog emergency. During my renewal meeting, the founder told me “you chose to have kids,” accused my wife and me of “taking advantage of the system,” demanded we hire an on-call nanny, and said I couldn’t miss more than 3–5 days next year. She also told me I “can’t treat this like some job” in order to stay home with sick kids. I’m currently trying to find a new teaching job because the entire situation feels unsustainable.