Or, as one person conjectured, they didn't actually get the name and went by their notes on who this "principal" was.

The retraction is basically telling the reader "Someone claiming to be either the principal and/or Dawn Hochsprung"

Because if you read it one way, you could read it as saying that someone, unnamed, merely said "principal" without giving the name.

And that the reporter filled in the name being that "the principal" is Hochsprung.

Or you could read it your way and read it as saying that someone unnamed claimed to be Hochsprung.

Or you could read it as saying that it wasn't Hochsprung because she was dead so that it had to be someone else.

That would mean they are stating as a fact that she was dead at the time of the call and couldn't have made the call due to that.

So there are so many possible mistakes and the biggest one is writing an article and making a retraction that is left open to interpretation.

That should require another retraction.