To answer some comments first. The previous story is not overdramatised. I did not refer to this KS2 coordinator as a paranoid narcissistic because of a grudge, I used it because the symptoms fit exactly (it is a medical term). These blogs are written for teachers. It is important for teachers to know what sort of environment they are going into.
As I said in my first post, the kids at BSB are great and the classroom teaching is very rewarding. However under the hood things are not good .
A's story below is not unique, other stories will follows:
A's story
A was an Aussie. Now that should not be a real problem but for BSB it was. Mainly because BSB does not like making their staff legal and it was a bit harder to do this for Aussies and Kiwis than for Brits. Other Bucharest schools appeared to have no problem getting legitimatzas for Aussies and Kiwis.
However, A was being brought to Romania to replace P, who left after only a month (but thats another story). She was told that her visa requriements would be provided and be with her airline ticket at Sydney. She arrived (from the outbacks) to find that no, she had to go to the Romanian Embassy to get a visa, so the school paid for her to fly to Canberra and back, so delaying her flight to Bucharest. Cost the school (parents) $400 for an office stuff up.
Next she has the incident with the computer mentioned in the previous blog. Then she was assaulted while entering her apartment, after which the school shifted her to a more centrally located apartment. She then heads off for a Christmas holiday in Paris. At this stage her first pay had gone through and she expected the next pay to be OK. Unfortunately the school office made another administrative blunder and her pay did not go through. The result was that she was almost stranded in Paris with only 20 euro. fortunately friends baled her out until the school fixed the problem. The initial response of the Owner was "what do you expect me to do, I am on holiday"
However that is all very small beer compared to what follows.
After Xmas the school claimed that her application for a work permit / legitimaza has been denied. The owner tells A not to worry they will cover any fine etc. A then finds that her 30 days overstaying her tourist visa are nearly up and she asks to go our to renew her visa. She is told not to go so that now, as well as working illegally in Romania, she is is to become an illegal immigrant as well.
The effect of being an illegal immigrant is that you get a big red stamp in your passport showing that you are banned from entering Romania for 6 months - this then affects any application for a visa to other countries.
A declared that she was going as she did not want to be illegal.
This is the letter she got in reply (word for word).
14th March
Dear A
As of yesterday I have been informed that our second application with the Romanian work department regarding the vacancy of a teachers job for an Australian citizen has been refused. This means we will not be able to reapply to the Ministry and for you it will not be possible to apply for a long term visa.
For both parties to forfill the current contract it will not be possible for you to leave Romania until the weekend following the 30th June.
Although the situation is beyond the control of the school we shall be responsible for paying the requested fine that will be incurred in June when you leave Romania.
I would request that you sign and date the second copy of this letter as an indication of your acceptance of the terms outlined above.
Regards
Corina Corda
President of the Board
Junior Foundation Focus
This meant she was to have no holiday outside Romania in April (visiting Europe was part of the reason she accepted the job), It meant a reentry ban which would effect application for visas to other countries and it meant that she would be an illegal immigrant who could be detained and deported if discovered as well as working illegally. It also means that you are totally beholden to the owner of the school without any legal remedy open to you.
When A said she was going to renew her visa anyway, she was told that if she left the country she would be sacked.
A was not the only staff member in this situation. The other person was P a New Zealander who had been teaching at BSB for over a year. P and his partner started working through Romanian lawyers and after an incident with a school inspector Corina decided she would pay a bribe and get both people out at Easter to get new tourist visas.
P went off to Switzerland to get his while A went to Budapest. In Budapest they told her to get lost because while she had used the 90 days of her visa the 180 days before the next one could be issued were not up. She then went to Bratislava where the Romanian embassy was not so strict and they started to process her visa application. Unfortunately Easters - both Catholic and Othodox (separate dates) got in the way and the upshot was instead of taking 3 days she spent all of her holidays plus about 3 school days in Bratislava waiting for her visa. All this could have been avoided had Corina (the owner) not deliberately manipulated things so that these staff had to use their holidays to get the visas. There were several other administrative stuff ups by the school as well which I will not bore you with the details of.
Now if you think that is not enough, When poor A goes to change the date she is flying home she finds that the school booked her return flight in february !!! Now would you expect that if the school were providing the tickets for you to work from October until June that they would book your return flight after school finished, of course you would. If for some reason they had to book it in February you think they would at least alert the recipient that she would need to change the ticket date before end of Jan, well they did not do that either. You might also say that A should have checked the return date when she received the tickets - but then how many of you have thumbed through the wade of paper that makes up the older tickets to check the dates printed on the ticket itself - very few. So here was another monumental stuff up by BSB Office staff - and not I might add atypical.
And what did the principal Jo Wells do, well in the main she supported Corina, not the staff member.
