Mediator called to troubled school
Rival factions of parents and teachers trying to oust the principal or the commissioner at a Te Atatu primary
Aprofessional mediator has been called in to troubled Matipo School, where parents and teachers have split into rival factions trying to oust the principal or the commissioner.
Almost 250 parents at the West Auckland school have signed a letter expressing no confidence in principal Paul Wright.
Wright has filed a grievance case against the commissioner, Dennis Finn, who was appointed by the Ministry of Education after the school board of trustees resigned a year ago.
And 24 of the school’s 40 staff have expressed no confidence in the ministry’s intervention process. Only four staff members supported the process, with 12 unsure or not voting.
Finn has appointed professional
mediator Judith Scott to investigate the issues — an inquiry he said the school would have to pay for. A group of parents has instructed lawyer Simon Mitchell to present their concerns to Scott.
A staff list provided by Wright to a parent on August 12 shows 22 teachers have been appointed since January last year, three of whom have quit in the past three months, out of 34 teachers on the staff.
The school’s roll rose steadily from 523 in July 2015 to 592 last year but dropped to 544 this July. Finn said about 40 students left “in a reasonably short period of time this year”.
A parent said families were upset at talk Wright had said he’d trespass some parents from the school.
Another said parents had not been consulted enough about changes.
Finn said he was aware of the trespassing issue but could not comment on it. “It’s an employmentrelated issue. I’m working on it.”
He said teachers, in turn, had told him they were concerned about parents “coming into their classrooms without making arrangements”.
He accepted that the school should have communicated with its parents better before making some changes.
However another group of parents, who support Wright, said no parents had actually been trespassed from the school, although one was threatened with trespass because he “manhandled” another family’s child.
They said agitation against Wright started almost as soon as he arrived in October 2017 because he removed from the payroll three relatives of former principal Wayne Bainbridge, who had led the school for 28 years.
The school’s 2017 financial statements show Bainbridge’s daughter was employed as the office manager, his son-in-law was the caretaker and his son was paid $48,393 in 2017 as an information technology contractor. The 2018 accounts show that all had left by 2018.
In April 2018 the Ministry of Education said “a number of historical serious misconduct issues” at the school were being referred to police and the Education Council.
A spokeswoman for the Education Council, now called the Teaching Council, said on Friday it was “still investigating allegations of misconduct at Matipo Rd School”.
She said the council had not had any complaints about Wright.
Parent Jamie Lowe, who obtained the data on staff turnover from Wright, noted that only two of the six teachers who resigned this year were “aggrieved”, and the others left for personal reasons such as taking jobs closer to their homes.
Ministry of Education deputy secretary Katrina Casey confirmed that “a range of concerns has been raised in relation to Matipo School”.
“We are working with the commissioner to ensure the wellbeing of the students, staff and the wider community,” she said.