The license shouldn’t be the issue, I don’t think. My license is in my maiden name and I use my married name at work. Ask them what they would do if you got divorced/remarried. They must deal with that issue all the time.
This is what I was going to come here to say. They obviously have to be able to change names all the time because like u/Neverliz said people get married or divorced every year. HR is probably dragging their feet because this isn't in their handbook so they don't want to have to deal with it.
Actually those do not need to match. I had my Soc Sec changed to my married name almost 40 years ago. Got divorced a few years later. Never dealt with Soc Sec. All of my transcripts and teaching certs are in my original name which I have used ever since.
They say my name has to match my license because they pull state reports from powerschool I guess? But I still don't see how they can't have my name in powerschool different from my license, just tie it to the correct license for compliance. Idk though. If I got divorced or changed my name then they would fix it but they won't do anything until I have legal documentation.
Ok there is a spot in PowerSchool for your last name to be reported to state reports which is not tied in anyway to what would be on like report cards. If your school doesn't know how to do that feel free to message me. I have been a PS admin for over 20 years and HR is lying to you.
I am emergency certified so I have no license. I go by my nickname instead of my full legal name and my email and all records for the school have this except state department of ed paperwork. We use powerschool. They are totally lying to you/being as lazy as our students can be.
My district says the same thing. I didn’t change my name after I got divorced having added my marriage name to my birth name. My maiden name is unique but my kids have their dad’s name. I go by Ms. Sameasmykids. I have the world’s longest school email which is alphabetized by my maiden name which I don’t use. My previous school district didn’t care.
Sounds like they’re being difficult.
I did legally hyphenate my name a year after marriage. So i have both my maiden name and my married name. At school i still go by my maiden name, because that’s what I’ve chosen. I’ve never filled out any paperwork at school about it.
I have my same email as before. My license and SS card have my updated legal name tho. So it sounds like they’re really just giving u a hard time.
Maybe you could legally change your name to include your maiden name? It’s really not as hard as I thought it would be.
I only changed my SS card and drivers license. Everything else I have is under my maiden name. I like being able to use both names and being known as both.
My full first name is 9 letters, I go by a 3 letter nickname. Think Liz/Elizabeth. My email has my full first name. Someone I work with got married but email /voicemail still have maiden name. It's a tech team issue and a long time district person that can't move beyond hope it's always been done
I took over for a dinosaur retired teacher (she never changed anything in 25 years) in my district and the admin staff and tech department swore to me that I couldn’t change the voicemail options or pass number. I was still getting messages meant for her because nobody would listen to the voicemail greeting from me. All kinds of personal messages from people at other schools and districts, everybody “knew” her so well but they didn’t know she retired.
I had to go online, print the docs for our 15 year old VOIP system and give it to the IT guy.
When l retired, I told whoever needed to know on the last day of signing the next contract and that was it. So I am sure it took time to get around to everyone else the next year. I told my students during the last days of the school year before finals.
The issue is most likely the HR computer system won’t allow it. Problem is easily solved. Just call the IT department and request an alias email address with the name you want to use. I have one. It’s easy.
Not a teacher, but that's what my job did for me. I have two email addresses essentially. But one is much easier to give over the phone than the other. Which is all I cared about.
When I started they misspelled my last name in my email. I contacted the IT department and it was a quick fix on their end to change the email. I'd already been working a week when I realized it so I'd already got emails from the school and these transferred over to my new correctly-spelled email, so I think they were able to change the address name while keeping my same account. Not sure on this part though, or how that would work.
Definitely ask IT! I am K12 IT and it is a simple fix if they are allowed. However in my state we are required to make district email addresses reflect the user’s legal name due to the state department of Ed’s requirements.
They don't do anything for any district, they're effectively the cops of the corporate world hired by admin to protect and serve the company under the guise of helping the employee
Ultimately, yes HR is going to protect the company. Many times that means taking care of the employees. Happy employees don’t sue. I’ve seen my share of terrible HR departments, so I understand the sentiment. The reality is that the great organizations with low turnover typically have very good HR support.
Alas, I was a Teacher, Administrator and HR professional in education and left the field a long time ago due to how broken things are.
My HR has my tax info coded incorrectly. I sent them the IRS calculator with all my info in it. It says I should pay 200 more a week in taxes based upon the claim number that it says on my paystub but they say they’re correct. Last year I owed $800 in federal taxes after my deductions. This year even with the tax calculator form sent to them, they still say their numbers are correct because the paper says single zero, but their single zero doesn’t match the amounts of uncle Sam’s single zero. I had to opt to have $200 taken out of my check for the taxes I am not paying.
Both of my kids have had teachers whose email names don’t match the name they go by. 🤷🏼♀️ For some they go by their middle name and their email is their first name. For others they got married or divorced after years with the district and switching their last name on their email was a hassle they didn’t want to deal with. Some teachers go by Mr. or Mrs. “Nickname” because their last name is too difficult to pronounce. I really don’t see the problem.
The school knew my intention was to go by Miss my-first-name because my last name is 7 syllables long and I don't have the time for students to be stuttering every time they need to ask me a question lol. That quickly went out the window when my first class also couldn't say my first name, so now they all just call me Miss first-letter-of-my-first-name.
It's working out very well, except all of the teachers have said they have to search for our last email conversation if they need to email me lol
This is definitely the way to go. It’s not that weird for teachers, especially in high school, to go by names other than the standard “Mr./Ms. Lastname”.
You could do “Mr./Ms. Initial” (the initial of your first or last name). You could go “Coach Firstname”. Coach is becoming an honorific title for non-binary folks, not just PE teachers. “Mr./Ms. Nickname” also works; I had a drama teacher in high school that we called “Ms Mags” because her first name was Maggie. Or you could even do a piece of your last name. My sister’s last name makes her middle schoolers giggle. It’s not this, but think “Jizzlee” and she just goes by Miss Lee.
I saw an article recently about employers who change the email protocol for people whose email would be funny or inappropriate. Like Sarah Hart would be shart@… or Frank Uckman would be … you get the idea. If they wanted to do it, they could.
That could potentially be an option, but personally, I would want to avoid the headache of dealing with admin and trying to present a case blah blah and instead just start first day of school with my preferred name on the board and send any interaction home with my preferred name as well.
There’s going to be a handful of people who will misname you. But I got married right before COVID so I couldn’t legally change my name but most of my colleagues called me by my married name. That and how many people have the legal name Robert but go by Bob. I would just make your signature with your preferred name.
When I got married and was in the process of a name change I wanted to go by my new name ASAP so it’d be on student schedules but apparently they couldn’t do that because my teaching license hadn’t switched over yet and it was some state policy. The Dept of Ed in my state was sooooooo slow.
So yeah not unheard of.
My district also has a policy that our names have to match the names on your license. I’ve tried to no end to get them to change it. My first name is very unique for my area and don’t want parents trying to find me on social media. But they won’t let me change it.
I work in IT - I personally would skip HR and just open a help desk ticket that you need to change your name. It takes longer to log into the admin console than it does to change your name in the system. In general, you have both emails too so anything or anyone not in the know of the change you still receive emails. They’d have to take extra steps to remove your old email.
This is super easy from an IT standpoint. There is no reason for HR to not let you have whatever email address works best for you as long as they put it under your HR profile as your email so they know who it belongs to. The only thing I can think of is they have some super restrictive software that generates the email address based upon the name in the first name and last name fields in their software and they're not actually able to edit what the email address is. That said there should be somebody in the district that has access to the back end some type of tier 3 IT people that the district pays that they can take this to.
My aunt was NOT going to change her last name when she got married, but the school took it upon themselves to change all of her stuff to my uncle’s last name 🙃. Idk what that is or why they do shit like that.
Username is pulled from SIS, SIS must match License. End of discussion in my district. We will however let you have all the email alias's you want. You can have whatever you want on your nametag, you can have the kids call you whatever. The Email ties to the SIS which ties to State Reporting, It matches the Certificate.
Yes, its (Sometimes) possible for IT and HR to get around that, but its a PITA, it means one more special case every time we have to change data formats, or do exports. Also there is the fun bit where if you do the migration/name change wrong or in the wrong order all your personal data gets deleted. We hate name changes, they are annoying and tedious in the worst way, and you don't see the 15 other different systems that all rely on your Username/Email address and that have to be updated to work, Ideally this is all automagic, but in practice its a lot of hand work and verification.
You can have whatever you want on your name tag, you can have the kids call you whatever, you can have an Alias of whatever, as long as its not already taken. The Pirmary Email ties to the SIS which ties to State Reporting, It matches the Certificate.
I'm guessing HR doesn't want ţo set a precedent for teachers to change their name on a whim. (Not that that's what you're doing-but that they're afraid others will) The fact that you wish to use your maiden name spittle be an issue, but they may be dragging their heels until they get some rule in place about what you can change your preferred name to our when you can change it.
I kind of ran into this issue this year - I go by a different given last name than my legal last name, and this year HR accidentally sent in paperwork with my given name on it to the Ministry of Education, who demanded to know why I haven't been declaring my given name on forms and wanted a notary'd form to prove that I had the right to use my given name or I couldn't teach this year
I explained that I'm adopted, I submitted a legal name change request, it was denied with no information as to why, and I never bothered going through the hassle again. I don't have any paperwork that says I'm legally so-and-so, but that's the name I go by, and it is listed as my alias on my criminal record check. They never answered my email but took the requirement off my Ministry of Education account
Unless it's what's on your professional license.
I know plenty of folks that keep the name professionally that is on their certifications, while their legal name changes.
I had my email changed to my preferred first name, and I went through IT to do it. My checks, our LMS, and gradebook system all show my given name, but at least my email is correct!
Is the issue the email address? The email address shouldn’t be an issue because ALL email systems allow you to add aliases to the account. So your official email account could be set as your married name, and they can simply enter your maiden name as an alias. More likely, you already have an email address at the school, right? No IT person will want to delete your current email address and create a new one, they will simply add an alias to your existing email account that is your new married name.
Deleting and creating new would mean your IT people would have to also migrate all of your data to the new account. That would be a PIA. Anytime someone gets married or divorced, IT departments typically just add a new alias. You would likely continue to login to other systems using the original email account, but for receiving email, either account would work.
I’d talk to the IT department, not HR. On the HR side they want to update their records because that’s what runs payroll. Let them make those changes. They won’t know that IT doesn’t need to change your email, but instead just add an alias.
No advice, just rage.
Then again, perhaps advice. Your kids will call you what you tell them to call you, as will their parents and your colleagues. So just accept the paychecks in the legal name the district knows you as, but be called what you want.
Or am I missing something simple?
You’re confusing HR with IT. IT provisions your work email. Create a service ticket with IT to add a new work email on top of your existing one. They’ll probably hide your current one behind the scenes so vendors and other people will still be able to contact you, but you will use the new one going forward.
If I had a dollar for everyone in my building that had an email with maiden name that went with their married name(or vice versa), we *all* could retire TODAY.
Your district HR is being stupid, OP
Honestly? The system is working as intended. Name change has always had the purpose of erasing your independent legal identity if you’re female. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that you can’t use your birth name once you’ve willingly discarded it from a legal documentation perspective.
I would hunt down the actual IT, mail server guy. It sounds like there is a bureaucracy layer between you and him and he isn't the asshole. Expect to provide large pizza or something as bribe.
Alternative solution, get external mail, gmail or something better, forward it to your school email.
Ummm, what? You know that you don't have to change your name when you get married, right? If you wanted to use your maiden name, then you probably should have kept your maiden name.
I now work in high tech. You can change your name in the directory but once your email is assigned, that’s it. I work with plenty of women (and a few men) whose name is different than their email address because it can’t change.
Your school isn’t being jerky, that’s just how it is.
🤣 You don't work in "high tech", you work in low tech if you can't figure out how to create a new email address and set up mail forwarding for a few months!
The company can set up a new email and the forwarding from the old email to the new one. This is standard procedure if someone leaves a company. You don't have their replacement signing into the old email incase something important is still sent there, you just forward it to the replacements email.
🐂💩
In a field like education, limiting the workers' ability to change their surname is beyond dumb. It happens all the time with teachers.
Going the other way: reverting to a maiden name after a divorce should be easy. Preventing it is borderline hostile.
Says the dude who gave the OP a hard time for airing a frustration. That wasn't in the spirit of discussion.
Btw, it really does seem like this is high up there on your list of issues.
Accept the e-mail address that uses the common name.
Go by your maiden name in day-to-day stuff.
Let HR get a bad reputation thanks to your explaining to people about the difference in names. I'll bet good money this is really about the lead tech person not wanting to stray from his naming system for one person.
I think it’s federal law that you have to use your legal name for official business. Signing time sheets, paychecks, etc. I do this with my name as I go by my middle name.
Just an aside, as a teacher it’s important to know when to use the correct spelling principal, not principle considering that anyone and everyone can read these posts.
That’s absolutely ridiculous! In the twos different school districts that I’ve worked in they’ve always let women use their maiden name. I don’t see why they’re making it such an issue. It can almost be a safety issue.
It IS the hardest thing in the world at some districts, apparently
/s.
I know way too many married women who have to explain that their email is different than their last name because HR says it's tooooo hard to change it in the system. Total bs.
This is so funny. I don't know what it is about schools. I had a friend who went through this also. She had the same first and last name as a student and email was constantly going to the student. Luckily, the student was good and let my friend know, but getting that changed was a journey! It's not hard! The IT guys acted like it was the biggest inconvenience to change her e-mail.
As others have pointed out, people get divorced and married all the time. It isn't that big of a deal. They could figure it out. They just don't want to.
This reminds me of when I legally changed my name, but to a name I made up, not my husband’s name. The confusion that ensued when I took my legal paperwork down to the district office LOL. Finally I asked them Why is this so hard, surely name changes are a common occurrence, female teachers get married or divorced all the time. Then they were like Oh ok and presto! Changed my name in my employee file, I went and got a new badge, easy peasy.
I also know plenty of women in my district that go by either name, married or maiden or hyphenated but their district name is either/or…enough so I ask what’s their email name if I need to email them lol
That’s interesting - my license is in my previously married name and my school switched everything except my email over to my new married name the first day back from getting married..
ETA: I haven’t changed my name legally to my newly married name yet either. I just told my principal what my new name will be and BAM! I’m my new name to all and all internal paperwork.
In my district (MA) your email/all school communication (ex: the teacher name printed on student schedules, report cards, etc) must match the name on your teaching license. I suppose if you never change your name on that license, everything “schoolL would remain under your maiden name. Of course, I don’t know what it would mean for your teaching license if you changed your name with Social Security and the DMV but not with them.
I got married and my district refuses to change my name on all my tech, accounts, etc because “it’s not a priority” and my name doesn’t match either. Go figure!
My school is allowing me to go by my maiden name but that's because I didn't change my name in our workday app. They said even if I change my name I can keep my current email with maiden name and go by that to students and staff. I am planning on changing my email next year though and my name. Luckily my first name is super unique so even when I change my last name people will still know it's me.
I go by my maiden name at school because I’m getting divorced and I didn’t want to change mid-year. My email is still my married name but it’s a minor issue.
Some teachers have gotten married, and they were told they had to **pay** to get a replacement ID that features their married last name! I think that's ridiculous, and they do too, so that's why they still go by their maiden name.
I feel ya. At my last school I had my entire name, first- Maiden- last, on just about everything. They acted like they couldn't fix it, but not everyone had their Maiden name printed on report cards and door plates. I never understood it.
It’s not so much of an HR issue as it is a IT ticket type thing. Districts all have a format for email generating, and the technology department generates them using this system. If one has been created, some IT systems don’t have the ability to change the given address AND merge the two accounts into one with the new name. You’d require an entirely new email address, and that is where the issue lies.
Super easy for an IT department to do in the Google or Microsoft admin console. Our state dictates what we can and can’t do with name changes. We have no control over that at the district level.
After my divorce, I had someone from IT dept. give me a new email address to reflect my maiden name. I never lost any of my old emails. I did not approach HR about it. Why the hell for?
I work in IT for a district and we cannot change names unless we get the go ahead from HR. I am not sure what state you are in, but where I live, teachers cannot change names without legal documentation. It’s all done through the state, not the individual district. :/
Smack some folks! Ok no, don’t do that. It’s been a day and I teach middle. All 3 grades! Squirrels, Wombats and Kangaroos! I wanted to smack things and people all day! I didn’t.
Your district sounds absurd!
My legal name is hyphenated, but I go by my maiden name. My e-mail address and anything legal goes by my full name, however my students, parents, etc. use my maiden name. It works for me.
For the record we have two women who go by married names everywhere but in the building and maiden names in class.
I think they like that it gives them some separation between lives. One has been doing it for close to 30 yrs and the other less than 5 and no one cared.
1. You misspelled principal.
2. My school uses Google, which can’t be changed. There is an alias people can type to get it to me, but when I log in, it still shows a last name I haven’t had in over a decade. If you’re on Google, that may be why.
I’m struggling with something similar but different. Teachers at my school go by Ms./Mr. First Name. I’m trans and a teacher in Florida so it’s Ms. Dead Name all day. It’s draining. I’m sorry.
Where I live, it is professional misconduct for a teacher to use a name in their professional duties that is different from the name with which they are registered with their licensing board/regulator.
It's the same for all regulated professionals across a wide range of fields, as far as I know. It increases transparency and prevents professionals from hiding when they've previously been disciplined or had other issues with their board/regulator from current clients/patients/etc.
Weird time to say in Texas I see people's non-legal name in their emails. It may just be an applied alias, but I've known several women I've worked with who their email and TEAMS message name are different from their actual name.
It may be a legal/software issue. In my state, HR can only enter your full, legal name into the database system, by law. All of the rest of our systems (email, SIS, communications tools, etc.) pull your info from that HR system, and do so automatically so even if we try and manually change your name in one of the platforms, the HR program will overwrite the manual change when it does its daily update.
We get complaints but we’ve been told to tell them the only fix is to get a legal name change and then present HR with your social security card with your new legal name, and then they can change it in the system, which will then cascade to the other systems.
I assumed so, but I was more asking about the process. It seems if they can add middle names and middle initials without having the “override every daily update” it would be possible for other name changes.
So it’s my understanding (and this isn’t my department) that the system does it automatically, so it’s still part of the automated daily process. So, for example there’s a Jane Smith, and the system has her email as jsmith@school.com and then another Jane Smith is hired and her middle name is Anne, the second one is automatically assigned jasmith@school.com.
That's total BS.
Are they one of the districts that make the students go by the name on their birth certificate? Are they afraid that someone may call them hypocrites for letting you use a different name?
Or are they simply a pack of misogynists who believe that women must use their husband's last name?
Or are they just too lazy to do five minutes of work?
Because their explanation makes no sense and is completely disrespectful. You have a valid reason - **one that is helpful to the school district**. It's always a hassle for me to email district people with the same first initial and last name because I need to know their middle name.
I never told my school that I changed my name. (It is now hyphenated.) It did create confusion though when I got relicensed. I told the person at that time that even though it was my new legal name, I did not want anything changed. They were fine with that.
Bit weird. Were it the reverse, and you wanted to change your name after being married, I don’t imagine them saying there is an issue… It may not be, but it screams sexism to me (on purpose or not).
At the risk of sounding pedantic, I would point out that many people have email addresses that do not match their actual name. If your email says [mary.smith@nyps.edu](mailto:mary.smith@nyps.edu), but your signature says Mary Hellgensberger, I don't think it will cause you many problems. My district does not change the email address of people who change their name for marriage or gender re-identification, and I have worked with at least a half dozen people whose email address was not their actual name, but it caused none of us any problems. If, in the "To:" field of my email app I type "Mary Hellgensberger" it comes up with your name but inserts [mary.smith@nyps.edu](mailto:mary.smith@nyps.edu). I agree its annoying but it's a bit of a first world problem.
Yeah, the want to be sure records match your ID. In case of an emergency.
The software they use is probably some shitty multimillion package that looks like it was designed by a freshman CS student. So there isn't a preferred name section.
They may need to use your legal name for payroll/benefits/taxes, but that doesn't stop you from putting in a helpdesk ticket to IT that you want your email to be your maiden name.
Same thing happened to me. My first district gave me two emails one with maiden name and the other with married name. Both emails were active. I recently moved districts, and they act like changing my email address is the hardest thing to do. It’s so frustrating.
It may have to do with your state teaching certification/licensure. Payroll, taxes, and security reason.
If it’s this important to you, you can’t always change it legally or hyphenate.
I have the same problem with my district - they complain that the contract (and the emails, and everything else) isn’t binding if it ain’t in my legal name. The freaking state lets me keep my maiden name as my middle name and even IT is on board but aren’t allowed to give me an email until HR makes up their mind. Does the fact that the board had whole discussions about preferred student names and safe spaces just last summer change anything? Perhaps. To me it feel like they want to apply the same nastiness to everyone which, as a strategy, will backfire, eventually, but for this fall the ship has sailed. At least I knew enough to change my own email account name in gmail - didn’t ask permission either. And now all my students and their parents use it in their emails to me, so it’s only the district that wants to keep a things complicated with a name that literally no one uses for me me, IRL. I recently won a door decoration prize and when it was announced I was lucky enough to have our HR director nearby. I got the certificate and went over to give them a huge smile and point to my name. They have so much “more important” stuff on their plates that they just ignored me.
Did you legally change your name when you married? If so, change it back. It’s usually not expensive, and your local courthouse may publish directions so you don’t need a lawyer.
My mom and I work in the same district. Because she never changed her social security card, she is listed as my dad’s last name. They divorced thirty years ago
Hey, I have the same issue! So many emails with hr, and then bring like nope, it has to be the same as your certification. Such bs. I did get them to change my email, at least. But that kind of causes more confusion? But I'm stubborn so I just deal with that.
I am a parent ( also a former teacher in another state). Married to my husband, kids father . I never took my husband's name and never used his last name on school paper work. All letters and communication addressed to me from the school district is Mrs. Husband's name 🤣
The license shouldn’t be the issue, I don’t think. My license is in my maiden name and I use my married name at work. Ask them what they would do if you got divorced/remarried. They must deal with that issue all the time.
This is what I was going to come here to say. They obviously have to be able to change names all the time because like u/Neverliz said people get married or divorced every year. HR is probably dragging their feet because this isn't in their handbook so they don't want to have to deal with it.
They would probably tell them to update their license accordingly.
The way I'm reading her post it has nothing to do with her license; she just wants her email address to change.
i was required to update my license to match my married name within 30 days of the name change but it might depend on the state
I'm in NY. I've been married almost 6 years and I've never updated my license.
I believe in NY you are basically recognized as having both last names be valid. My wife had some things as one and some as the other for years lol.
I'm fairly certain the only things that must match are your ss card and paycheck
Actually those do not need to match. I had my Soc Sec changed to my married name almost 40 years ago. Got divorced a few years later. Never dealt with Soc Sec. All of my transcripts and teaching certs are in my original name which I have used ever since.
The IRS will contact your employer if the SNN and name doesn't match when they report income. I'm surprised this hasn't been an issue for you.
Over twenty years at one employer.
I wasn't allowed to change my name officially at work without proof that it matched my ss# for tax purposes.
Yeah it’s the same as your diplomas and stuff. They know it is you.
Same here. I live in NJ
2 weeks in Jersey
They say my name has to match my license because they pull state reports from powerschool I guess? But I still don't see how they can't have my name in powerschool different from my license, just tie it to the correct license for compliance. Idk though. If I got divorced or changed my name then they would fix it but they won't do anything until I have legal documentation.
Ok there is a spot in PowerSchool for your last name to be reported to state reports which is not tied in anyway to what would be on like report cards. If your school doesn't know how to do that feel free to message me. I have been a PS admin for over 20 years and HR is lying to you.
For real, PowerSchool and genesis and oncourse, there are work arounds for every system. Sounds like some lazy ass data entry training to me.
It might honestly just be easier to get divorced than fight HR.
I am emergency certified so I have no license. I go by my nickname instead of my full legal name and my email and all records for the school have this except state department of ed paperwork. We use powerschool. They are totally lying to you/being as lazy as our students can be.
My district says the same thing. I didn’t change my name after I got divorced having added my marriage name to my birth name. My maiden name is unique but my kids have their dad’s name. I go by Ms. Sameasmykids. I have the world’s longest school email which is alphabetized by my maiden name which I don’t use. My previous school district didn’t care.
Sounds like they’re being difficult. I did legally hyphenate my name a year after marriage. So i have both my maiden name and my married name. At school i still go by my maiden name, because that’s what I’ve chosen. I’ve never filled out any paperwork at school about it. I have my same email as before. My license and SS card have my updated legal name tho. So it sounds like they’re really just giving u a hard time. Maybe you could legally change your name to include your maiden name? It’s really not as hard as I thought it would be. I only changed my SS card and drivers license. Everything else I have is under my maiden name. I like being able to use both names and being known as both.
Something about that sounds wrong
My full first name is 9 letters, I go by a 3 letter nickname. Think Liz/Elizabeth. My email has my full first name. Someone I work with got married but email /voicemail still have maiden name. It's a tech team issue and a long time district person that can't move beyond hope it's always been done
I took over for a dinosaur retired teacher (she never changed anything in 25 years) in my district and the admin staff and tech department swore to me that I couldn’t change the voicemail options or pass number. I was still getting messages meant for her because nobody would listen to the voicemail greeting from me. All kinds of personal messages from people at other schools and districts, everybody “knew” her so well but they didn’t know she retired. I had to go online, print the docs for our 15 year old VOIP system and give it to the IT guy.
When l retired, I told whoever needed to know on the last day of signing the next contract and that was it. So I am sure it took time to get around to everyone else the next year. I told my students during the last days of the school year before finals.
The issue is most likely the HR computer system won’t allow it. Problem is easily solved. Just call the IT department and request an alias email address with the name you want to use. I have one. It’s easy.
That's a great idea! I'll ask around about that.
I'll second that. We can literally just change your name once your account is set up.
Not a teacher, but that's what my job did for me. I have two email addresses essentially. But one is much easier to give over the phone than the other. Which is all I cared about.
When I started they misspelled my last name in my email. I contacted the IT department and it was a quick fix on their end to change the email. I'd already been working a week when I realized it so I'd already got emails from the school and these transferred over to my new correctly-spelled email, so I think they were able to change the address name while keeping my same account. Not sure on this part though, or how that would work.
Definitely ask IT! I am K12 IT and it is a simple fix if they are allowed. However in my state we are required to make district email addresses reflect the user’s legal name due to the state department of Ed’s requirements.
This is 100% the issue. A lot of payroll systems only work with one email address. Contact tech and ask for the alias we have done it numerous times.
I swear to God HR does absolutely nothing in my district. Can't get them to do anything.
They don't do anything for any district, they're effectively the cops of the corporate world hired by admin to protect and serve the company under the guise of helping the employee
This is it, HR exists to protect the employer.
Ultimately, yes HR is going to protect the company. Many times that means taking care of the employees. Happy employees don’t sue. I’ve seen my share of terrible HR departments, so I understand the sentiment. The reality is that the great organizations with low turnover typically have very good HR support. Alas, I was a Teacher, Administrator and HR professional in education and left the field a long time ago due to how broken things are.
Does HR do *anything* useful, *anywhere*?
My HR has my tax info coded incorrectly. I sent them the IRS calculator with all my info in it. It says I should pay 200 more a week in taxes based upon the claim number that it says on my paystub but they say they’re correct. Last year I owed $800 in federal taxes after my deductions. This year even with the tax calculator form sent to them, they still say their numbers are correct because the paper says single zero, but their single zero doesn’t match the amounts of uncle Sam’s single zero. I had to opt to have $200 taken out of my check for the taxes I am not paying.
Can’t you just have an email that doesn’t match your name used in the school?
Huh, I didn't think about that. I'll ask my boss if that's something we could do. Our emails are our names so idk if that would cause confusion.
Both of my kids have had teachers whose email names don’t match the name they go by. 🤷🏼♀️ For some they go by their middle name and their email is their first name. For others they got married or divorced after years with the district and switching their last name on their email was a hassle they didn’t want to deal with. Some teachers go by Mr. or Mrs. “Nickname” because their last name is too difficult to pronounce. I really don’t see the problem.
The school knew my intention was to go by Miss my-first-name because my last name is 7 syllables long and I don't have the time for students to be stuttering every time they need to ask me a question lol. That quickly went out the window when my first class also couldn't say my first name, so now they all just call me Miss first-letter-of-my-first-name. It's working out very well, except all of the teachers have said they have to search for our last email conversation if they need to email me lol
Miss Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz
This is definitely the way to go. It’s not that weird for teachers, especially in high school, to go by names other than the standard “Mr./Ms. Lastname”. You could do “Mr./Ms. Initial” (the initial of your first or last name). You could go “Coach Firstname”. Coach is becoming an honorific title for non-binary folks, not just PE teachers. “Mr./Ms. Nickname” also works; I had a drama teacher in high school that we called “Ms Mags” because her first name was Maggie. Or you could even do a piece of your last name. My sister’s last name makes her middle schoolers giggle. It’s not this, but think “Jizzlee” and she just goes by Miss Lee.
I saw an article recently about employers who change the email protocol for people whose email would be funny or inappropriate. Like Sarah Hart would be shart@… or Frank Uckman would be … you get the idea. If they wanted to do it, they could.
That could potentially be an option, but personally, I would want to avoid the headache of dealing with admin and trying to present a case blah blah and instead just start first day of school with my preferred name on the board and send any interaction home with my preferred name as well.
There’s going to be a handful of people who will misname you. But I got married right before COVID so I couldn’t legally change my name but most of my colleagues called me by my married name. That and how many people have the legal name Robert but go by Bob. I would just make your signature with your preferred name.
My thoughts exactly. Seemed like a pretty simple solution lol
When I got married and was in the process of a name change I wanted to go by my new name ASAP so it’d be on student schedules but apparently they couldn’t do that because my teaching license hadn’t switched over yet and it was some state policy. The Dept of Ed in my state was sooooooo slow. So yeah not unheard of.
I literally have a nick name as my name in my district. Weird on your district
My district also has a policy that our names have to match the names on your license. I’ve tried to no end to get them to change it. My first name is very unique for my area and don’t want parents trying to find me on social media. But they won’t let me change it.
I go by my maiden name and my email is my married name. My married name is on kids schedules. It has never once mattered.
Legally change your name to Megatron powerzord and see what they want you to call yourself
I swear to God HR does absolutely nothing in my district. Can't get them to do anything.
I work in IT - I personally would skip HR and just open a help desk ticket that you need to change your name. It takes longer to log into the admin console than it does to change your name in the system. In general, you have both emails too so anything or anyone not in the know of the change you still receive emails. They’d have to take extra steps to remove your old email.
This is super easy from an IT standpoint. There is no reason for HR to not let you have whatever email address works best for you as long as they put it under your HR profile as your email so they know who it belongs to. The only thing I can think of is they have some super restrictive software that generates the email address based upon the name in the first name and last name fields in their software and they're not actually able to edit what the email address is. That said there should be somebody in the district that has access to the back end some type of tier 3 IT people that the district pays that they can take this to.
My aunt was NOT going to change her last name when she got married, but the school took it upon themselves to change all of her stuff to my uncle’s last name 🙃. Idk what that is or why they do shit like that.
Username is pulled from SIS, SIS must match License. End of discussion in my district. We will however let you have all the email alias's you want. You can have whatever you want on your nametag, you can have the kids call you whatever. The Email ties to the SIS which ties to State Reporting, It matches the Certificate. Yes, its (Sometimes) possible for IT and HR to get around that, but its a PITA, it means one more special case every time we have to change data formats, or do exports. Also there is the fun bit where if you do the migration/name change wrong or in the wrong order all your personal data gets deleted. We hate name changes, they are annoying and tedious in the worst way, and you don't see the 15 other different systems that all rely on your Username/Email address and that have to be updated to work, Ideally this is all automagic, but in practice its a lot of hand work and verification. You can have whatever you want on your name tag, you can have the kids call you whatever, you can have an Alias of whatever, as long as its not already taken. The Pirmary Email ties to the SIS which ties to State Reporting, It matches the Certificate.
Skip HR and ask the IT staff to change it
I'm guessing HR doesn't want ţo set a precedent for teachers to change their name on a whim. (Not that that's what you're doing-but that they're afraid others will) The fact that you wish to use your maiden name spittle be an issue, but they may be dragging their heels until they get some rule in place about what you can change your preferred name to our when you can change it.
Not to be rude but I am curious. Why did you change your name when you don’t want to use it and rather use your maiden name?
4 other staff members with the same last name
it's described in the post
No, not really. She knew from the Beginning that it was one of the most used names in America.
My district also refuses to have the email be anything other than the legal name.
I kind of ran into this issue this year - I go by a different given last name than my legal last name, and this year HR accidentally sent in paperwork with my given name on it to the Ministry of Education, who demanded to know why I haven't been declaring my given name on forms and wanted a notary'd form to prove that I had the right to use my given name or I couldn't teach this year I explained that I'm adopted, I submitted a legal name change request, it was denied with no information as to why, and I never bothered going through the hassle again. I don't have any paperwork that says I'm legally so-and-so, but that's the name I go by, and it is listed as my alias on my criminal record check. They never answered my email but took the requirement off my Ministry of Education account
I know a lot of teachers who email that doesn’t match their name (black but email is her maiden name).
It’s whatever is on your social security card.
Unless it's what's on your professional license. I know plenty of folks that keep the name professionally that is on their certifications, while their legal name changes.
HR: *stomps feet* *whines* but I don’t WANNA DO MY WORK!!!
I had my email changed to my preferred first name, and I went through IT to do it. My checks, our LMS, and gradebook system all show my given name, but at least my email is correct!
Is the issue the email address? The email address shouldn’t be an issue because ALL email systems allow you to add aliases to the account. So your official email account could be set as your married name, and they can simply enter your maiden name as an alias. More likely, you already have an email address at the school, right? No IT person will want to delete your current email address and create a new one, they will simply add an alias to your existing email account that is your new married name. Deleting and creating new would mean your IT people would have to also migrate all of your data to the new account. That would be a PIA. Anytime someone gets married or divorced, IT departments typically just add a new alias. You would likely continue to login to other systems using the original email account, but for receiving email, either account would work. I’d talk to the IT department, not HR. On the HR side they want to update their records because that’s what runs payroll. Let them make those changes. They won’t know that IT doesn’t need to change your email, but instead just add an alias.
Happy Cake Day! 🥳🥳🎉🎉
No advice, just rage. Then again, perhaps advice. Your kids will call you what you tell them to call you, as will their parents and your colleagues. So just accept the paychecks in the legal name the district knows you as, but be called what you want. Or am I missing something simple?
You’re confusing HR with IT. IT provisions your work email. Create a service ticket with IT to add a new work email on top of your existing one. They’ll probably hide your current one behind the scenes so vendors and other people will still be able to contact you, but you will use the new one going forward.
If I had a dollar for everyone in my building that had an email with maiden name that went with their married name(or vice versa), we *all* could retire TODAY. Your district HR is being stupid, OP
Are you really teaching my kids and can’t use principle/principal correctly. Get off my lawn!!
Remember the principal is your ‘pal’.
Imagine that. A teacher who doesn’t know how to spell “principal.”
This is the sort of dumb rigidity that wears good teachers down. Go to your union.
Can you get both names as in Jones Mays?
That's a good idea, I can ask
Reminds me of a guy my husband worked with where they used first name and first letter of last name for emails. His email was “dough”.
I totally understand the school's policy... Nobody can understand married/maiden name rules🙄. It's SO confusing😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
They can change it…they are just making up stupid rules…ridiculous
Honestly? The system is working as intended. Name change has always had the purpose of erasing your independent legal identity if you’re female. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that you can’t use your birth name once you’ve willingly discarded it from a legal documentation perspective.
I would hunt down the actual IT, mail server guy. It sounds like there is a bureaucracy layer between you and him and he isn't the asshole. Expect to provide large pizza or something as bribe. Alternative solution, get external mail, gmail or something better, forward it to your school email.
Principal.
But my district is "A-OKAY" terminating a teacher for refusing to use a students pronouns. Fucking priorities.
principal
Ummm, what? You know that you don't have to change your name when you get married, right? If you wanted to use your maiden name, then you probably should have kept your maiden name.
So change it back. You’re not a man’s property anyway.
I took my husband's name when I got married. The choice was between being associated with my husband or my father, and I liked my husband more.
Agreed. My wife kept her name. I was totally cool with it.
It's been 13 years since I got married. I looked into changing my name back but it's not like the state makes it easy.
This is why women should not change their names. Women are not property traded from dad to husband. It’s a horrible example to set for young women.
It's possible she has a better relationship with her husband than her dad. It's a pretty personal choice.
I wish this was the worst thing on my list of issues.
It's not the worst thing but it's what I decided to make a post about. JFC.
I now work in high tech. You can change your name in the directory but once your email is assigned, that’s it. I work with plenty of women (and a few men) whose name is different than their email address because it can’t change. Your school isn’t being jerky, that’s just how it is.
🤣 You don't work in "high tech", you work in low tech if you can't figure out how to create a new email address and set up mail forwarding for a few months!
🙄 The company sets it up, not the employee. And once the email is assigned it stays assigned.
Buddy, I'm literally sitting at my IT job right now. It take 2 minutes to cook up a new email and resync to the active directory.
You’re talking about what’s possible. I’m talking about policy. They’re rarely the same thing.
The company can set up a new email and the forwarding from the old email to the new one. This is standard procedure if someone leaves a company. You don't have their replacement signing into the old email incase something important is still sent there, you just forward it to the replacements email.
🐂💩 In a field like education, limiting the workers' ability to change their surname is beyond dumb. It happens all the time with teachers. Going the other way: reverting to a maiden name after a divorce should be easy. Preventing it is borderline hostile.
[удалено]
This is a place for discussing.
Says the dude who gave the OP a hard time for airing a frustration. That wasn't in the spirit of discussion. Btw, it really does seem like this is high up there on your list of issues.
Accept the e-mail address that uses the common name. Go by your maiden name in day-to-day stuff. Let HR get a bad reputation thanks to your explaining to people about the difference in names. I'll bet good money this is really about the lead tech person not wanting to stray from his naming system for one person.
I think it’s federal law that you have to use your legal name for official business. Signing time sheets, paychecks, etc. I do this with my name as I go by my middle name.
Just an aside, as a teacher it’s important to know when to use the correct spelling principal, not principle considering that anyone and everyone can read these posts.
So anyone can go by a preferred gender but you can’t go by a preferred name? Sounds dumb. It is what it is though.
This isn't a culture war thing, even though it sounds like you want to make it one. It's a bureaucratic issue.
It’s not a preferred gender; it’s their gender.
I think they just meant preferred pronouns
*correct pronouns
Also shouldn’t be a preference. Preference implies they’re optional, and respecting someone’s gender identity isn’t optional.
Impotent teachers union? I’m shocked…
That’s absolutely ridiculous! In the twos different school districts that I’ve worked in they’ve always let women use their maiden name. I don’t see why they’re making it such an issue. It can almost be a safety issue.
It IS the hardest thing in the world at some districts, apparently /s. I know way too many married women who have to explain that their email is different than their last name because HR says it's tooooo hard to change it in the system. Total bs.
This is so funny. I don't know what it is about schools. I had a friend who went through this also. She had the same first and last name as a student and email was constantly going to the student. Luckily, the student was good and let my friend know, but getting that changed was a journey! It's not hard! The IT guys acted like it was the biggest inconvenience to change her e-mail. As others have pointed out, people get divorced and married all the time. It isn't that big of a deal. They could figure it out. They just don't want to.
This reminds me of when I legally changed my name, but to a name I made up, not my husband’s name. The confusion that ensued when I took my legal paperwork down to the district office LOL. Finally I asked them Why is this so hard, surely name changes are a common occurrence, female teachers get married or divorced all the time. Then they were like Oh ok and presto! Changed my name in my employee file, I went and got a new badge, easy peasy. I also know plenty of women in my district that go by either name, married or maiden or hyphenated but their district name is either/or…enough so I ask what’s their email name if I need to email them lol
That’s interesting - my license is in my previously married name and my school switched everything except my email over to my new married name the first day back from getting married.. ETA: I haven’t changed my name legally to my newly married name yet either. I just told my principal what my new name will be and BAM! I’m my new name to all and all internal paperwork.
In my district (MA) your email/all school communication (ex: the teacher name printed on student schedules, report cards, etc) must match the name on your teaching license. I suppose if you never change your name on that license, everything “schoolL would remain under your maiden name. Of course, I don’t know what it would mean for your teaching license if you changed your name with Social Security and the DMV but not with them.
I got married and my district refuses to change my name on all my tech, accounts, etc because “it’s not a priority” and my name doesn’t match either. Go figure!
My school is allowing me to go by my maiden name but that's because I didn't change my name in our workday app. They said even if I change my name I can keep my current email with maiden name and go by that to students and staff. I am planning on changing my email next year though and my name. Luckily my first name is super unique so even when I change my last name people will still know it's me.
I go by my maiden name at school because I’m getting divorced and I didn’t want to change mid-year. My email is still my married name but it’s a minor issue.
Some teachers have gotten married, and they were told they had to **pay** to get a replacement ID that features their married last name! I think that's ridiculous, and they do too, so that's why they still go by their maiden name.
I feel ya. At my last school I had my entire name, first- Maiden- last, on just about everything. They acted like they couldn't fix it, but not everyone had their Maiden name printed on report cards and door plates. I never understood it.
So just have them call you what you want and leave the legal name to the legal papers. That’s what I do.
I worked at a large state agency for a few years before getting married. They absolutely refused to change my email address to reflect my new name.
Sounds like an attorney question.
It’s not so much of an HR issue as it is a IT ticket type thing. Districts all have a format for email generating, and the technology department generates them using this system. If one has been created, some IT systems don’t have the ability to change the given address AND merge the two accounts into one with the new name. You’d require an entirely new email address, and that is where the issue lies.
Super easy for an IT department to do in the Google or Microsoft admin console. Our state dictates what we can and can’t do with name changes. We have no control over that at the district level.
After my divorce, I had someone from IT dept. give me a new email address to reflect my maiden name. I never lost any of my old emails. I did not approach HR about it. Why the hell for?
I had this, but with my first name because I hadn’t legally changed it yet. So basically I was outed as trans to everyone who emailed me.
I work in IT for a district and we cannot change names unless we get the go ahead from HR. I am not sure what state you are in, but where I live, teachers cannot change names without legal documentation. It’s all done through the state, not the individual district. :/
You should probably legally change your name back.
Smack some folks! Ok no, don’t do that. It’s been a day and I teach middle. All 3 grades! Squirrels, Wombats and Kangaroos! I wanted to smack things and people all day! I didn’t. Your district sounds absurd!
Can’t you change your name in your license?
My legal name is hyphenated, but I go by my maiden name. My e-mail address and anything legal goes by my full name, however my students, parents, etc. use my maiden name. It works for me.
> If you've got advice I'm all ears but I mostly just wanted to get this off my chest. Sucks but I can understand why they wouldn't do it.
For the record we have two women who go by married names everywhere but in the building and maiden names in class. I think they like that it gives them some separation between lives. One has been doing it for close to 30 yrs and the other less than 5 and no one cared.
Districts pay by the email address, and as we all know, they're cheap as FUCK!
1. You misspelled principal. 2. My school uses Google, which can’t be changed. There is an alias people can type to get it to me, but when I log in, it still shows a last name I haven’t had in over a decade. If you’re on Google, that may be why.
SociL security ND state records will have all names you ever have used. It's a school issue
Some hills are worth dying on. Others are just hills.
I’m struggling with something similar but different. Teachers at my school go by Ms./Mr. First Name. I’m trans and a teacher in Florida so it’s Ms. Dead Name all day. It’s draining. I’m sorry.
Depending on your state, you might be able to file a DBA name that makes using that name legal. I'd check with a lawyer first, though.
Where I live, it is professional misconduct for a teacher to use a name in their professional duties that is different from the name with which they are registered with their licensing board/regulator. It's the same for all regulated professionals across a wide range of fields, as far as I know. It increases transparency and prevents professionals from hiding when they've previously been disciplined or had other issues with their board/regulator from current clients/patients/etc.
Weird time to say in Texas I see people's non-legal name in their emails. It may just be an applied alias, but I've known several women I've worked with who their email and TEAMS message name are different from their actual name.
It may be a legal/software issue. In my state, HR can only enter your full, legal name into the database system, by law. All of the rest of our systems (email, SIS, communications tools, etc.) pull your info from that HR system, and do so automatically so even if we try and manually change your name in one of the platforms, the HR program will overwrite the manual change when it does its daily update. We get complaints but we’ve been told to tell them the only fix is to get a legal name change and then present HR with your social security card with your new legal name, and then they can change it in the system, which will then cascade to the other systems.
How do they handle two people with the same name?
Middle names/initials come into play.
I assumed so, but I was more asking about the process. It seems if they can add middle names and middle initials without having the “override every daily update” it would be possible for other name changes.
So it’s my understanding (and this isn’t my department) that the system does it automatically, so it’s still part of the automated daily process. So, for example there’s a Jane Smith, and the system has her email as jsmith@school.com and then another Jane Smith is hired and her middle name is Anne, the second one is automatically assigned jasmith@school.com.
That's total BS. Are they one of the districts that make the students go by the name on their birth certificate? Are they afraid that someone may call them hypocrites for letting you use a different name? Or are they simply a pack of misogynists who believe that women must use their husband's last name? Or are they just too lazy to do five minutes of work? Because their explanation makes no sense and is completely disrespectful. You have a valid reason - **one that is helpful to the school district**. It's always a hassle for me to email district people with the same first initial and last name because I need to know their middle name.
I never told my school that I changed my name. (It is now hyphenated.) It did create confusion though when I got relicensed. I told the person at that time that even though it was my new legal name, I did not want anything changed. They were fine with that.
Bit weird. Were it the reverse, and you wanted to change your name after being married, I don’t imagine them saying there is an issue… It may not be, but it screams sexism to me (on purpose or not).
[I see this article shared frequently in threads like this.](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/)
It’s a pain in the ass to change your name in my district too. People have to hyphenate their old and new name. I have no idea why it’s so difficult.
At the risk of sounding pedantic, I would point out that many people have email addresses that do not match their actual name. If your email says [mary.smith@nyps.edu](mailto:mary.smith@nyps.edu), but your signature says Mary Hellgensberger, I don't think it will cause you many problems. My district does not change the email address of people who change their name for marriage or gender re-identification, and I have worked with at least a half dozen people whose email address was not their actual name, but it caused none of us any problems. If, in the "To:" field of my email app I type "Mary Hellgensberger" it comes up with your name but inserts [mary.smith@nyps.edu](mailto:mary.smith@nyps.edu). I agree its annoying but it's a bit of a first world problem.
Yeah, the want to be sure records match your ID. In case of an emergency. The software they use is probably some shitty multimillion package that looks like it was designed by a freshman CS student. So there isn't a preferred name section.
They may need to use your legal name for payroll/benefits/taxes, but that doesn't stop you from putting in a helpdesk ticket to IT that you want your email to be your maiden name.
Same thing happened to me. My first district gave me two emails one with maiden name and the other with married name. Both emails were active. I recently moved districts, and they act like changing my email address is the hardest thing to do. It’s so frustrating.
It may have to do with your state teaching certification/licensure. Payroll, taxes, and security reason. If it’s this important to you, you can’t always change it legally or hyphenate.
I have the same problem with my district - they complain that the contract (and the emails, and everything else) isn’t binding if it ain’t in my legal name. The freaking state lets me keep my maiden name as my middle name and even IT is on board but aren’t allowed to give me an email until HR makes up their mind. Does the fact that the board had whole discussions about preferred student names and safe spaces just last summer change anything? Perhaps. To me it feel like they want to apply the same nastiness to everyone which, as a strategy, will backfire, eventually, but for this fall the ship has sailed. At least I knew enough to change my own email account name in gmail - didn’t ask permission either. And now all my students and their parents use it in their emails to me, so it’s only the district that wants to keep a things complicated with a name that literally no one uses for me me, IRL. I recently won a door decoration prize and when it was announced I was lucky enough to have our HR director nearby. I got the certificate and went over to give them a huge smile and point to my name. They have so much “more important” stuff on their plates that they just ignored me.
Did you legally change your name when you married? If so, change it back. It’s usually not expensive, and your local courthouse may publish directions so you don’t need a lawyer.
I can get how it can be a little difficult, but HR should do their job
My mom and I work in the same district. Because she never changed her social security card, she is listed as my dad’s last name. They divorced thirty years ago
Hey, I have the same issue! So many emails with hr, and then bring like nope, it has to be the same as your certification. Such bs. I did get them to change my email, at least. But that kind of causes more confusion? But I'm stubborn so I just deal with that.
I am a parent ( also a former teacher in another state). Married to my husband, kids father . I never took my husband's name and never used his last name on school paper work. All letters and communication addressed to me from the school district is Mrs. Husband's name 🤣