Letters

11th of June 2009

Delivered by Hand

To Mark Thornton, Principle of the Titirangi Steiner School

In reply to your email of 8 June asking for confirmation that we have received your letter dated 5 June, you will obviously be aware that we have now received the letter.

As you did not attach it in your first email and we had subsequent internet problems over the weekend, we were not aware of your ‘instant dismissal’ notice until then when the post arrived on Monday.

As you are now aware, we had meanwhile spent a lot of time over the weekend trying to find a solution to the problem that would:

a) give us more time to try and persuade you and then work with you to manage school behaviour in such a way that children stop getting hurt,

b) give [R] access to the part of the education that was not causing the problem.

As it happens, my bright idea fell by the wayside, again even before your aggressive actions towards us and our children, because it was not a legally viable plan.

Steve delivered the letter to school, and we stated that [R] would not be coming in, pending what was in it.

As we were coming in to the meeting later in the day, I checked with the Ministry and it is not possible to attend school part-time under the Education Act, sections 20 and 21 which are mutually exclusive apparently.

On receipt of the letter we were very shocked. Even had we received it on Friday, it still would not have given any notice of dismissal.

Also shocking was the discovery, on regaining internet access later that morning to receive an email from a trustee stating that as of the meeting on Thursday which he attended, he was expecting the Monday meeting to go ahead.

Therefore it must have been something that happened between Thursday night, and the time on Friday that you wrote the letter that decided you to take this action. 

The only thing that happened was that following another complaint of bullying, we came into school to investigate.  The incident involved [R] being threatened in the bush by a boy with an axe who then pushed her backwards into a tree trunk, such that when she stood up, she was so disorientated that she turned and fell again against the tree forwards banging her head and causing a sizeable lump and bruise.

What parent would not be incredulous as to why a teacher would leave a boy, known to have previously harassed and physically attacked students, alone in the bush with our daughter, who had already complained about his behaviour that week to the extent that he had told her he was “pissed off’ with her, with an axe?

That is why, in the morning, I went to her class teacher and told him that [R] would be late to class because I wanted her to show me exactly how far away he (the teacher) was at the time of this incident.  I was brusque and pointed, but not openly angry, until he actually claimed to have been watching.  This could clearly not have been the case, and yet he did claim to have been there, until my heated contradiction prompted him to admit that he actually wasn’t.

It is surely unthinkable to any reasonable person that this was your reason for dismissing our family summarily and with no consultation with us about the incident.  And yet, we are left with no other conclusion to draw.

Having now seen your notice to parents regarding Monday’s debacle, we can make the following comment.  We brought the camera into school to protect ourselves from later misrepresentation of events.  That this was necessary is proved by your inaccurate representation to the parents of what happened.  For example your claim that you eventually called the police because of our continued refusal to leave.   One minute fifteen seconds after we entered the room, all staff left.  We were then alone until production of the trespass notice at time-code reading 5 minutes 46 seconds after our arrival and the time-code on ‘going to call the police’ reads 6 minutes 15 seconds.  The parents arrived to take the children home at time-code reading of around 27 minutes.   This is a very different picture than the one you have drawn in your notice, and we will be making these facts available to the community.

We did not interview any parents on camera whatsoever and any shots of parents were unintentional and will not be used for any purpose.  The word ‘interview’ is also misleading since it implies that we were asking questions, whereas we were explaining what had happened to us.  We mainly wanted the audio track and a continuous record in case of later massaging of the facts as above.

Your ‘trust’ that parents have not been adversely affected by our peaceful protest is the most accurate and likely part of your notice since grown-ups should really be able to cope with a bit of truth-telling in a professional institution in which the management is so ready to spoon-feed false facts to the community.

For the moment we would like you please to turn your attention to the following matters:-

In your communications with us you stated that you would contact the Ministry if the children were not enrolled elsewhere within 10 days.  Section 35AA (1) of the Education Act 1989 as inserted by section 13 of the Education Amendment Act (No.2) 1998 requires the principal of a private school to notify the Secretary for Education immediately in writing of the suspension or expulsion of any student, including under point iv, the reason for the dismissal.

We trust that you will be doing this and not forgetting to mention [Z] (5) and [K], (2) who have also been excluded from the school.

We now ask you to clearly demonstrate the legality of your actions, both in terms of following your own published guidelines, from the parents hand-book, your recently published disciplinary review, or any other publication,  and also how in terms of the various Acts governing both the operation of the school,  and children’s rights.

We would like your answer to these matters please in writing within seven days.

In the meantime we will continue to inform you of the actions we are taking to try and remedy this terrible mistake.

As we did yesterday we are re-stating our request that you reconsider this hasty and damaging action, re-instate our children and turn your efforts to creating the safe environment for all children that you advertise.

Yours sincerely

Angel and Steve