It would be hard to find a more mean-hearted school council than the one at Cranbrook School in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill. One might have called Cranbrook a prestigious private school.
Private it is, prestigious is surely debatable if the low standard set by its council over the departure of, and financial settlement with, Nicholas Sampson is a measure of the current ethos.
Rather than issue their “clarifying statement” about Sampson’s departure, the council should have issued a statement – signed by every member – with a three-word admission of fault.
It could have read something like: we f..ked up. It could have been followed by a sincere, indeed grovelling, apology to Sampson.
More mean-spiritedness was to come. On Tuesday, Sampson wrote a gracious letter to students and staff thanking them for being part of their lives. The Australian understands it was posted on a students’ Whatsapp group run by the Cranbrook Parents Association – and then quickly removed, but not before students took screen shots and the letter was shared widely among a community reeling from the removal of an esteemed and much respected school principal. Did the Cranbrook council give the direction to the CPSA to remove Sampson’s letter? Each part of this saga has been made worse by the shenanigans of the school’s ruling elite.
As unnecessary as that was, it was nothing compared to the way Cranbrook’s ruling elite decided to split hairs and grasp at straws, as only cowards with something to hide might do.
When he announced Sampson’s resignation, Cranbrook council president Geoff Lovell said there was “an irrevocable breakdown of trust” between the headmaster and the school board after Sampson failed to advise the council of a matter dating back to 2014, concerning a male teacher at Cranbrook who allegedly sent graphic emails to a former female student he had previously taught at different school.
In fact, as Sampson said in his statement on Tuesday, he has been vindicated. “There now cannot be any doubt that I reported the matter to the council in 2015 and that the allegations were externally investigated by an independent body (and) NSW police and notified to the Office of the Children’s Guardian.”
In a “clarifying statement” issued this week, the council said it was referring to the “School Council as constituted on that date” only, and that “the council wishes to clarify that Mr Sampson did report the matter to a differently constituted council in 2015 and acknowledges its statement may have caused confusion”.
What kind of school council is this? Is the current council seriously suggesting that every time a new member joins the council, there must be a come-to-Jesus session about every single historical episode previously reported to the council in the past? To what end? So that a newly constituted council can reprosecute it?
Current Cranbrook councillors should hang their heads in shame. It’s a lesson for other boards. When the ABC comes knocking, a board needs to man up, not go to water. In this case, the Cranbrook board should have displayed the sort of decency and fairness that parents expect their boys to learn at a school that charges around $41,000 a year.
Cranbrook has its work cut out to get back into that league.
To make things worse, the council indulged in more mean-spiritedness on Wednesday, saying Sampson’s statement was “made without our prior knowledge or agreement.”
They sure don’t know when to stop digging. The only digging that needs to be done is into the ABC’s 4 Four Corners program in March by Louise Milligan, which the former principal claimed was “wildly inaccurate” and “lacking in impartiality”.
Sampson, who has lodged a “detailed complaint” with the ABC Ombudsman, says he is “determined to pursue that complaint to its conclusion”.
Cranbrook School may desperately want this to sorry saga to end but the school council has only itself to blame if current and prospective parents are questioning just how prestigious the school is.
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