Letters
6th of July 2009, 9:30am
Dear Mr Thornton
We are still waiting for your account of your actions in ejecting our family from the school with no consultation, warning, or right of appeal and in direct contradiction to our contracted meeting of 8/6/09.
Your viewpoint that we have a ‘fundamental opposition to a school policy.....namely behaviour management’ is completely incorrect and inaccurate and you have provided no evidence for it. Having read and re-read both the parents handbook and the new policies since the behavioural policy review, we are of the opinion that in fact we were following the procedures and policy completely.
(The other two “reasons” you have given are chronologically incorrect, having occurred after your unreasonable and damaging decision to exclude innocent children from the school.)
It is you, as Manager of the school, who has failed to implement the policies in such a way as to keep all the children safe from harm and who has thus caused this entire mess.
We have numerous examples, all but one of them uncontested in our correspondence, of how you failed to act to prevent reoccurrence of potentially dangerous situations.
With regard to our respect for school policy, our daughter continued to tell the adults around her of the things that were happening, as the procedures require, and as we did, but you did NOT take them ‘very seriously’, and little action was taken, especially with children who were constant offenders, when provision for dealing with these children is clearly in the procedures.
In fact, given that, at the parents meeting about us last week, you have allowed the point of view that ‘there was no axe’ and that ‘children don’t use axes’ at the school, to pass un-contradicted, it is obvious that far from taking it ‘very seriously’ you have been completely dismissive, even using the axe as a reason for chucking out our children.
Would you please now state clearly, for the record, whether you hold the opinion that there was no axe, and whether children are allowed to use such adult tools when working during school hours on school premises.
So it was that you broke your contract to meet with us on Monday 8th.
In doing so you are guilty of traumatising the very child who was following the procedures so exactly. You have then had the temerity to use “fundamental disagreement” with them as the actual reason for dismissal, even citing your ‘belief’ that there was no possible agreement between us.
Our daughter has been abused and traumatised by a whole school community based on your ‘belief’. That is beyond belief!
Not only that, but many of the opinions put forward at the secret meeting about us, were in a similar vein about how Ruby made it all up etc., which is a total abandonment of your duty towards her and towards any other vulnerable children.
Further points we would like you to attend to are the failure of Management to fulfil other contractual matters, such as those detailed in Heather Peri’s letter of welcome on 26/2/09 Where she stated that at the end of term, following a meeting, Ruby would be formally enrolled in the school. Why did this meeting never take place? Why was the formal offer not made as per your contract with us? Please clearly state the reason?
Here is yet another example of you not fulfilling your contractual obligations. At the time you will remember that we were clearly committing to the Steiner School and many people know that.
The failure of Management to fulfil the school’s contractual obligations in yet another instance of your incompetence. While we would not suggest that you were actually already planning to chuck us out, we note that you have told parents that you couldn’t have chucked us out since ‘we weren’t properly enrolled”, thus using your own incompetence against us, yet again.
What does that mean about Zoë, who was at the Steiner Kindy for over a year?
The arrogance of using your own ineptitude, and prejudice as the very reasons why we should not be treated with ordinary human respect and why our children should be rejected and abused by the adults who asked us to ‘entrust’ them to them, is disgusting.
You clearly think yourself to be above normal human interactions, and certainly immune from having to answer for your actions, even lying to parents about the chronology, so that it appears to be common belief in the school that we were kicked out because we used a camera on Monday! (Your two other reasons for kicking us out, make more sense when looked at in this light because it appears you wish people to mistakenly believe this nonsense).
Our experience of you as a professional Manager is that you have been duplicitous, irresponsible and have not taken your duty of care towards children seriously as befits someone in your position. You have abused the power that has been entrusted to you, risking the repute of a very established institution.
Your actions have been and apparently continue to be, dishonest, unprofessional, manipulative and abusive and clearly demonstrate that you are unfit to be working with children.
We request that you forward us within 21 days, all documentation concerning us and our children. We request this under the Privacy act, 1993 collection of personal information. Section 6. Information privacy principle 6.
Yours sincerely
Angel Garden Steve Paris