We write to you today, having kept quiet about all the atrocities happening at Heathfield High School (HHS). As some may know, we have been a part of the school since the Covid-19 pandemic and have tried to assist the school as far as possible.
Recently, we discovered a letter sent on October 6, 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, from the SGB of HHS to the then HOD in Education Brian Schreuder.
Some of the content of the letter asks the HOD to cease with the vendetta against our principal Mr Wesley Neumann. To withdraw charges laid against Mr Neumann and to have a commission of inquiry, inclusive of civil society, investigate the repressive culture of the WCED and that the HOD retires.
Sadly, two years later that very vendetta is continuing, and it has resulted in the erosion of a highly functional school. It is sad to see that there has been a total change in the hierarchy of the WCED as Schreuder was replaced by Brent Walters and Debbie Schäfer was replaced by David Maynier ... yet the repressive culture remains.
To this day, the officials have refused to come to HHS and address critical issues that affect the lives of our children.
There have been many private and even public pleas for the WCED to see reason, yet we sit with the current situation at HHS.
The devastating reality is that over the past six months there has been a serious decline in the management of the school. Learners have yet to formally meet these so-called “caretakers”. But they expect the respect that they have not afforded learners.
Currently, HHS has two “caretakers” doing the job that one person used to do. They are being paid more than R700000 per annum, which I might add is three years’ worth of the school’s yearly allocation.
WCED in its ongoing assault on our principal Mr Neumann is now at the point of continually postponing his arbitration. But to whose demise … the WCED, Mr Neumann, the staff of HHS?
None of the above! The very learners he sought to protect during Covid are the ones who continue to suffer today. As the Special Action Committee, we as adults who are educated ask the Western Cape Education Department, which is also educated, to stop depriving the learners of HHS of their education.
Throughout the country, there is no other school operating under these conditions. Get the proper people to do the job.
Reinstate Mr Neumann or at the very least allow the process of arbitration to continue and conclude so that the learners of HHS no longer suffer for the vendetta of adults.
* Roefiekah Benjamin is a Secretary of the Heathfield High Special Action Committee.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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