Opinion: Somerville House P&F row strikes at heart of school communities
P&F associations are the heart and soul of a school community, which makes this latest scandal all the more disturbing, writes Kylie Lang.
Kylie Lang
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Parents have a right to demand accountability from their children’s school, and to participate in the education process.
It’s how kids learn best, when home and school work in unison, supporting each other in the common goal of raising good humans.
For this reason, there are very few schools in Australia that operate without a parents’ and friends’ association.
The P&F is staffed by volunteers – typically the same people who do the heavy lifting time and time again, and who provide their professional expertise for free, want the best for their and other people’s children, and aim to contribute positively to the school culture and reputation.
They act on behalf of all parents, including those mums and dads who do absolutely nothing, to raise standards and improve lines of communication.
Somerville House, regarded as one of Brisbane’s best schools, has not had a functioning P&F for four months and parents say they’ve been kept in the dark about why, accusing principal Kim Kiepe and the school’s governing body of “secretive cloak-and-dagger rubbish”.
Over $1 million of P&F raised money has been frozen, they allege, with P&F signatories unable to access funds and Westpac Bank brought in to investigate the matter.
Mrs Kiepe has denied accessing the money.
To call it a mess would be an understatement.
Somerville House is one of four schools run by the Presbyterian and Methodist Schools’ Association, a body which has been embroiled in scandals since 2017.
It has been accused of clandestine behaviour and a lack of transparency on numerous occasions by staff and parents at the schools it governs.
The bottom line in all of this, of course, is that schools exist for students.
And without students’ parents paying fees, these four schools – including Brisbane Boys’ College, Clayfield College and Sunshine Coast Grammar School – wouldn’t exist at all.
According to its constitution, ratified by the PMSA, the P&F exists to “support the PMSA and school in delivering a total quality education program within a Christian context”, “foster the interest of parents of present and past students in all school activities”, and “provide a forum of communication between members of the school community”.
However this week Mrs Kiepe wrote to the P&F executive advising the PMSA had given her authority to formally stop the P&F from running the tuckshop, uniform shop and bookshop.
These three services are key functions of the P&F.
And this, more than four months after Mrs Kiepe controversially stood down the management committee and, bizarrely, the previous P&F which was no longer operational anyway.
Mrs Kiepe is also accused of breaching PMSA procedure by standing down the P&F before any findings of an investigation into a workplace complaint against it were made or released.
The PMSA employee complaints policy and procedure document, a copy of which has been obtained by The Courier-Mail, states the principal should make his or her decision on the consequences/actions to be taken “as a result of the investigation findings and all further information available”.
The complaint was lodged with her on November 17, two days before the P&F were ordered to stand down. The complaint, which was not of a financial nature, was dropped on March 12, four days after a PMSA board meeting.
Parents, particularly those volunteering on the P&F and the 26 sub-committees (for rowing, music, debating and the like), are entitled to answers.
After being sent a list of questions by The Courier-Mail, Mrs Kiepe advised on Friday that the stand-down had been lifted following the withdrawal of the workplace complaint.
She said the management committee was now operational again, but a committee member described the response as “disingenuous and false”.
“For four months we have been bullied by the principal and shut down and shut out.
“We don’t know where we stand, and we don’t trust the principal or the PMSA. To imply everything is back to normal is false. It’s not and never will be,” the member said.
“Importantly, the mistrust around governance and finance has made the ongoing operations of this committee, or any committee, a highly risky prospect.
“The principal has fundamentally broken that trust relationship between the parent community and the school.
“It should never have come to this, and the students deserve so much better.”
Kylie Lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail
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