Fear of Power

Monday I posted an email from a teacher friend. She was afraid of repercussions, so I took it down.
Yesterday we had a teacher meeting where we were handed an evaluation sheet to fill-out on our principals. Soon I will be asking these folks for a letter of reference. (I'm not sure why as this is my last year teaching, but just nice to have in the career file especially since mine was severely destroyed during Katrina.) Will I be honest? They certainly have their good qualities, but there are some big holes. They hire first year teachers and throw them in a classroom with no support. One (assistant principal) is hardly ever visible (unless you go to her office or the teacher's lounge). When she was in charge of the school last year, because the regular principal was recovering from a gun shot, she was rarely in the school even 15 minutes before school started. When she arrived it seemed she began to think, "What do I need to do today." Communication and planning were terrible. (But that was last year, right?) Neither one leads team meetings or necessarily demonstrates a presence as a strong instructional leader.
The good points are they are generally supportive and responsive and the principal is one of the best I've ever worked for at recognizing and praising teacher efforts.
So to be honest or not? Ummmh?
At the meeting yesterday they had the list of teachers who had had perfect attendance for August and September. This includes being on time. My wife and I were pretty sure we were here on time every day in August, but we weren't on the list. The school has a fingerprint check-in system. We had been told that if we came in on Saturdays we should fingerprint in. It turned out that the secretary had read the machine print-out and registered us as coming in late on a Saturday. We almost lost our $7 bonus for August perfect attendance because we didn't show up to work on time on our day off.
I finished reading Zeitoun last night. It is a story about Katrina and abuse of power. To me it is clear that it is very hard to trust people who have power over you.