Yesterday Steve went to demonstrate outside the school.  This should not have come as a surprise to anybody as we have pledged to inform people about the way the school  has treated our family.  As yesterday was an Open Day, we needed to be there in order to fulfil our pledge.  This is the same treatment anyone could easily receive if they choose to send their kids there and, due to lack of proper management and appalling communication, fail to ‘understand’ how things are done, make ‘mistakes’, and discover that the school is not prepared to fulfil it’s contractual obligations.

Sadly, the tenor of uninformed reaction continued as one parent snatched one of the signs and broke it in half, saying that he had ‘heard’ what had happened but had not looked at the website (i.e. at our side of the story).  Apparently democratic protest is ‘sick’.  This kind of aggressive and violent behaviour is definitely of the ostrich variety; it is also reminiscent of the bullying behaviour we found it necessary to complain about in class 3/4.  We are not breaking the law by standing outside the school and informing the public of our shoddy and damaging treatment at the school’s hands.  (Unfortunately this individual has committed a felony by damaging our property and we will be following this up.)

During the protest, conversations were had with several parents, the police were apparently called, although how many times they will wish to come out just to witness us standing totally peaceably on the verge remains to be seen.  We will not set foot on school property while the Trespass Orders exist.

The conversations were informative, such that we were apparently mentioned in a meeting in which Sean Gribben admitted that the school had not handled the situation well. Unbelievably in the context of a professional institution, he used the opinion that ‘neither had we’, as a justification for throwing us out!  When this comes up in a legal framework, it will be shown up for the gub that it is, showing no regard to chronology, contracts,  or the proper weighting of a relationship between an institution, the children they are supposed to protect, and their families.  Anyway, Sean’s comment is hearsay.  The proper thing to do is to admit such a thing publicly and take steps to remedy the situation.

Any misunderstandings we had prior to our unlawful turfing out, were entirely down to the school’s lack of communication.  It is the responsibility of an institution, (any business) to inform users of it’s policies and procedures, such that they may use the service safely.  You may not like the emails, but that isn’t really relevant in a court of law.  The question is, was there anything offensive in them, and did the school respond properly to our concerns, such that the assaults on our daughter stopped? 

Nobody can seriously be suggesting that ‘writing annoying emails’ will be taken seriously as grounds for expulsion of a whole family, from a registered school, with no warning, breaking all contracts.  We use the term ‘annoying’  as a blanket term to describe our idea of why they were apparently such a problem for people.  Actually they are quite well written and describe events which have not been questioned.

Take a look at the correspondence and we challenge any person to find anything from the school that could in any way reasonably be said to be telling us that we were moving in the wrong direction, a direction that could endanger our children’s future at the school.  You will not find anything, no matter how hard you comb.  There simply was nothing.

The only possible comment that the school might try to use to show that we were so “bad” as to need destroying is from Mark Thornton here, because he said that he felt we had reached an impasse, but he went on to suggest the very meeting that we were contracted to have the day the trespass orders were served instead - his answer to the ‘impasse’ was to contract a meeting, then he broke that contract as well.  Is that style of management really good enough for a High School? Or any kind of school?

The points of view expressed by some parents at our continued objection to the events of 8th June, show clearly how the propaganda machine is operating within the school.  We know that the school is busy drawing a very negative picture of us, because people in the school have told us so.  Again, this kind of behaviour is reactionary and has no substance.

People’s exhortations that we should ‘get over it’, are misguided.  If it wasn’t so hurtful it would be hilarious.  How should we get over it?  Has the situation changed?  Have we been given a fair hearing?  Have we been given a proper concrete reason why our children have lost their right to go to that school when we’re just bought a house here because they did go there, and we have trespass orders threatening our residency?  No.  Not a bit of it.  In that case, why should the passage of a few weeks make any difference whatsoever to the injustice? Duh.

So the ‘getting over it’, is not about us, but about the school ‘community’.  It’s just that you’d rather we disappeared and stopped being an embarrassment.  Hmm, well, very Ostrich, very undemocratic.  Also not going to happen.

Mind you, there are still Meerkats.  People who waved and told Steve that he was doing a “good thing”.  Yay!  Someone even asked whether we had any leaflets today?  Thanks for that, we’ll bring some next time.

Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School is obviously used to being able to ‘lean on’ people, or ‘intimidate’ them into slinking off and feeling rejected somewhere quietly, and we are finding that there are many such families in the locality - many of them immigrants. (Spot the bullying.) 

But not this time folks. This time the chickens are coming home to roost.

More like an exclusive club than an accountable institution, the school package apparently comes with a built in snobbery such that if the school say ‘go away’ you should just go, otherwise you will get the, “why are you still here, we thought we told you to go” vibe.  Which basically amounts to a “you’re not one of us”, kind of thing, From out here that actually feels less like a club and more like a gang!  So why don’t we get it?  

Well, um, because we live in a democracy, as we’ve said before and a school is supposed to be a school, not a club or a gang.  Even Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School is accountable for its actions and we are merely calling it to account, and giving the whole ‘community’ notice that we will continue to do so until we get a result.  We don’t like bullying.

If Sean Gribben is going to admit that they could have handled the situation better, then, as an institution, they should and can choose to take responsibility for that and acknowledge that it is their actions in that respect that are the basis of this situation and that they should shoulder that and try and have another go and actually try and handle it better this time  

After all, they are still there, we are still here, in fact we’ve just bought a house here expressly because we made a commitment to the school.  Mark Thornton himself told us to find a way to ‘dig in‘ here, which we have done, exactly as he advised.  They only thing stopping them from making this situation right is their inability to admit that they’ve got it so wrong.  Should the school decide to show itself to be a mature organisation, able to self-analyse and big enough to apologise for it’s mistakes, they will find us most co-operative.  

We have already shown how willing we are to move from our position.  This was in response to a ‘secret’ meeting with Trust members, when we decided to take them at their word and take steps in a different direction on the basis that they were trying to achieve sanity and balance - but they did not fulfil their part of it, and in fact tried to bully us almost immediately.  Hilariously, Sean Gribben both said that they would deny having had the meeting if we publicised it and claimed that there was no secrecy in the school, almost in the same breath.

We cannot stress highly enough that it is the school’s responsibility to make sure that parents know the rules, both written and unwritten, and that if they don’t, people will make mistakes, mistakes which the school must be said to  have inadvertently caused by not communicating properly.  They should take that on board - they are an accountable institution.

To make a family responsible and pay the price is cowardly, unprofessional, cruel and unlawful.  What about the duty of care owed to our children under the terms of our contracts?

We have been treated in an inhumane way, with a total lack of natural justice.  We won’t go into the legalities of it here, but if we find it necessary to call on the weight of the law to convince all at the Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School that they are required to treat ALL people with ordinary human dignity and respect, then we will have to do our very best to do that for reasons amply illustrated on this site.

During the protest, Kate said that Steve looks like a crazy person all by himself standing there with signs like that.  Well that may be true, but there is a fine history of people having to look crazy to protest real injustices and we’re proud of our Steve for having the guts (yes it does take guts) to do it.  

Kate can apparently see why we got kicked out by the way we kept ‘going on about it’. Oh really?   So it was our lack of tolerance of our daughter being continually hurt that prompted the school to get rid of, not only that child, but our other two as well.  And they don’t need to show themselves able to deal with communications from parents who are justifiably worried about the bruises on their child?  What a ridiculous suggestion!  

So show us the communication from the school that says we were going about it the wrong way?  It’s not there.  

If the school isn’t responsible for informing parents about acceptable ways to communicate, who is?  Should it fall to a parent to do so, outside school grounds, while another parent has to stand there ‘like a crazy person’, protesting?  Who’s failing is that?  

Anyway, Kate, if someone goes on and on about something, it is usually because they are not being listened to, don’t you find?  

If we were the only people who had ever had to leave because of bullying, or if we had been complaining about the wallpaper, well that would be one thing.  But there are plenty of other casualties of the ostrich position of the school regarding open communication and he longer this situation goes on, the more we will find.

With regard to complaining about the wallpaper, the bruise Our Eldest Child got that day with the axe ,that’s the one that she got from being so scared that she walked into a tree, still hurts, more than two months later.

And that’s another thing, Jacek said that its not that people deny that there was an axe, it’s just that nobody can confirm it, because nobody was there.  

Well isn’t that interesting.  That’s exactly what we said!

He also said that the teacher was a supply teacher so that people sometimes think that they can get away with things that they couldn’t with a regular teacher because he doesn’t know the situation.  This may be true in general BUT, as Steve was able to inform Jacek,  on the first day of the supply engagement he had talked to the teacher at length because of our worries, and the teacher had assured Steve that he had been thoroughly briefed, was well aware of the situation, and that he would keep an extra eye on Our Eldest Child.  

In which case, the lack of anybody to comment on whether there was or was not an axe, speaks for itself.

Folks, there WAS no reason for ejecting our kids from that school.  We have every right (and an absolute duty) to be concerned about the safety of our children.  The school did not know what to do about the situation and reacted badly. What they should have done, (and could still potentially do), is work with us to resolve the problems caused by:-

a serious lack of balance between boys and girls in the 3/4 year group

a bunch of boys who have been able to run amok for years - acknowledged by almost everybody!

the difficulty of being a ‘soft’ year 3 among all those rough year 4s.

Added to that, the school needs to admit that it completely over-reacted to us being upset and shocked and angry when we were contracted to have a meeting with them, to have been kicked out, trepass ordered etc., 

The fact that the school reacted by throwing out Our Middle Child and Our Other Child, proves that it was simply that they had no answer to these problems and therefore just needed to shoot the messenger.  If they didn’t like the way we communicated, why did they not employ some methods to try and change that?  That was their duty, it was a choice they could have made.

Using our shocked, outraged and appalled behaviour afterwards as any kind of justification for such institutional abuse is just proof that they don’t know how to treat folks, and work only by reaction.  It is also a rather unpleasant victim-like position to take - showing that they don’t have any proper defence for their actions but bad management.

In law, chronology is much more important, as we may  sadly now have the opportunity to prove.

Another thing that proves the lack of communicational expertise is the total lack of comment or any communication by the teacher in that class Susanne Cole, who told us right at the beginning that Our Eldest Child was a sensitive child, and tried hard in the beginning to work with us to keep her safe, until Mark Thornton chose to interfere in those arrangements.  

It is one of the saddest things about the whole sorry affair that Susanne has been entirely silent, not even replying to Our Eldest Child’s own communication.  As a teacher of the Steiner method, committed to nurturing every child in her care, this must be a hurtful situation, and yet she is not empowered to fulfil her vocational duty in regard to one of her charges, and in fact must project that lack of empowerment onto the child.  That cannot be right.

That was, looking back, the moment when it occurred to us that the school was not properly ‘joined up’, because Mark Thornton tried to make us responsible for the fact that Susanne had made a contract for our parental supervision at break-time. He said “Well, Susanne should not have made that arrangement with you”, and we pointed out that, if true, that was school matter, for management and teachers to sort out.  We left that conversation feeling faintly uneasy that a matter of miscommunication between school staff could so easily be directed at us - little did we know how much that same faulty mechanism would hurt all of our children a little later on.

Clearly what has happened now is that Management, College and now Trust have closed ranks on a series of school failings, and scape-goated us as having caused the problems, whereas in fact, we merely observed and pointed them out. 

Many right thinking people in the school know this, and have stated to us clearly that they can see it.  Some of those people are influential in the school.  For some reason they are not, at present, managing to prevail on those who think that a dynastic structure of management will survive, into the new century and support the inception of a high-school, surviving come what may.

Presumably the rationale goes something like that the survival of the school is paramount and that one family does not constitute very much collateral damage.  We can imagine this convincing most liberals at the school for the simple reason that TRSS is the only alternative school in this neck of the woods.  That is the only possible way we can think of to convince right thinking people to drop this - but it is misguided because next time it could be you!

Those people, and all children who could be negatively affected by the school fudging its own duties and projecting the resulting mess them onto families, not properly honouring its contractual obligations, or it’s duties under the Health and Safety Act, really need us to keep protesting, because an injustice has been visited on a family, and until it is put right, lawful and peaceful protest is the democratic imperative.

Please prevail upon the Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School to behave in such a way as to honour the humane principles of Steiner Education which does not involve rejecting innocent children, with all the trauma that involves, because their parents wrote some emails!

More movies soon folks.  Don’t forget to to sign the petition.