Principal Banned for Manipulating School Calendar to Fit Cruise Trips
This case doesn't affect any specific cruise line, ship, or sailing, since investigators never identified them. If you're weighing an off-peak January sailing because fares often drop after the holidays, note that those savings exist precisely because schools are in session — check your own school's published calendar rather than assuming flexibility, and confirm any term dates directly with the institution rather than relying on informal schedules.
What strikes me here is the two-year gap between the misconduct and the exposure — Ballard moved fall and spring term dates around her own cruise bookings, then missed a January 3, 2024 workday returning from one trip and left early in February 2023 for another. That's not a scheduling quirk; a Decision Maker cited a need to "maintain public confidence in the profession" in imposing a lifetime ban. The unrelated findings — a school-funded Peugeot 5008 used for a family trip to France, plus camping gear, TVs, and a karaoke machine bought with school money — tell me this was a broader pattern of treating institutional resources as personal ones, not an isolated lapse. Families and staff who built their own plans around the published calendar are the losers here. In her shoes, I'd have taken the cheaper January fare and left the calendar alone — she can apply for review only after two years.