Students to principal: ‘Love you xxx’

An intermediate school principal has been charged with breaching professional boundaries with students who told him they loved and missed him.

The male principal, whose name is suppressed, is alleged to have used school funds to pay wages to a female former student without documentation, and to take that student out for dinner.

He is also alleged to have met with a student in his office at 7.30am with the door closed, communicated with students in a private Facebook group at 10pm, and received emails from female students who made comments such as “Miss you heaps” and “Love you xxx”.

Another intermediate school principal, who was called as an expert witness, told the Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal in Auckland that all these actions would have been inappropriate. “I’d be surprised if I received an email like that from a student, because I think normally there is a level of distance between a student and a principal,” she said.

But the male principal told the tribunal that he was a mentor to many of his students in his eight years at the school.

He has now moved to another school, but is charged with using Facebook to interact with current and/or past students after resigning from the first school, despite being asked not to by its board of trustees.

While he was at the school, he was directly in charge of its “leadership academy” and is charged with “disproportionate spending of school funds for leadership academy activities”.

A forensic accountant gave evidence that spending on the academy in 2014 exceeded the income allocated to it by more than $40,000.

The dinner with the former female student was alleged to have taken place in another city. The principal is alleged to have arranged to return from a school visit to Singapore via that city at school expense.

The accountant said the principal paid $118.50 on his school credit card for the dinner, described on the receipt as “food and alcoholic beverages”.

Lawyer Claire Patterson, representing the Teaching Council’s complaints investigation committee, cited one email in which a former student, who was then at high school, told the principal that she wanted to visit to “catch up”.

“What would be a good day to wag school and come in?” the student asked.

The principal replied: “Love to have you pop in. Wednesday afternoon is good or Thursday any time from 12.30pm. Not meant to wag school . . . but kids do.”

In other emails, he agreed to pay $250 to one former student and $150 to another to support the ex-students’ fundraising efforts.

Patterson said the late-night Facebook chat was in a private group with 16 members, including students, after the principal had moved to another town.

However the principal told the tribunal that the chat exposed his “inadequacy” with social media.

“I actually didn’t realise initially that I was in a group chat,” he said.

He said the girl whom he took out to dinner was a role model for younger students.

The tribunal hearing is continuing.

I’d be surprised if I received an email like that from a student . . . Expert witness