Ex-principal accused of unprofessional conduct

The professional credentials of a Calgary elementary school ex-principal are in question for allegedly designating students as “special needs” without proper assessments in an effort to get more money for his school.

Mark Patrick Buckley is also accused of having a sexual encounter in the music room of West Dover Elementary School on a weekend, and of housing animals for three years in an unsafe “zoo-like environment” throughout the school, presenting officer Ian Stewardson said Monday.

Buckley is charged with four counts of unprofessional conduct under the Teaching Profession Act, an Alberta Teachers’ Association conduct panel heard Monday in Edmonton. Buckley didn’t attend the hearing.

On a visit to the school in December 2011, Dianne Yee, an area director for the Calgary Board of Education, said West Dover’s hallways were cluttered with algaefilled fish tanks, furniture, dying wall plants and hazardous electrical cords.

After Buckley went on a medical leave in April 2012, Yee and facilities staff found leaking hoses, caged animals living in classrooms, odiferous egg incubators in the principal’s office, and bird feces “all over the couch and the walls” in a room where staff prepared breakfast and lunch for the school nutrition program, Yee said: “It was disgusting.”

In the first few weeks of the 2011-12 school year, the number of students at West Dover who were “coded” as having a severe disability doubled to 16 from eight, Yee said, which was “very unusual.”

Calgary forensic psychiatrist Dr. Kenneth Hashman testified, by phone, that Buckley told him he had brought someone to the school on a weekend to have sex.