If you trust the information you have on the teacher, I think that's the more important thing to worry about. Because if she has a bad reputation she probably really is bad. But I wouldn't go with what just one parent says (unless you really value that person's input)...you need to hear the same type of sentiments from more than one.
My experience is that parents try REALLY hard to like teachers and often don't see obvious negatives glaring right in their face. So I tend to trust negative input more than positive input. It could be the others aren't much better (or have other problems)...hard to say until you are acutally in the situation. Last year at around this time I was really disappointed when I found out who DD's teacher was (because ONE person gave me very negative input), but it was DS's teacher (who I had never heard anything negative about), who was the real nightmare. Let's just say she's incredibly good at faking people out. She plasters a huge fake smile on her face and then proceeds to completely ignore requests/concerns in a passive aggressive manner.
