Bad news to end a good day

Mondays are rarely really good days. Add to that the fact that I was trying a new lab that involved chemicals and beakers full of water made me less than excited about heading into work this morning. However, it all turned out really well. The students had some initial confusion about the lab details, but seemed to get into it and were almost entirely on task all class. The results seemed relevant and worthwhile. My math students understood the lesson without any major trouble and my last period class was unusally well behaved when I had a surprise observation (though, to be fair, they were probably good because they were worried that my observer was there to see them). All in all, it was a really good day, esspecially for a Monday. They dropped the big news on us at the faculty meeting, though. Our grade-level adminstrator is leaving in three weeks. This is very bad news. She had been at the school for 12 years and kept everything running perfectly. Everyone I know here loves working for her. Now, everyone is running around like the world is about to come to an end. This is most certainly not good news, but I am doing my best to withhold a final decision until I meet the replacement. We have a teacher here who is licenced for administration who I would love to see get promoted to the job, but I have been told that she is not interested. This could make for a long year. It could be even worse if all of the teachers talking about leaving now actually follow through next summer.