John Modipane and Khutso Chiloane, the concerned parents of two children who were enrolled in the school until recently, contacted Phalaborwa Herald with information regarding the issues they faced with the school management and teachers.
The allegations put forward were that the school changed their meal plan for the children and they refused to give the two parents the new meal plan citing that they were not allowed to show it to them.
This raised John and Khutso’s eyebrows and confused them as parents as to why they were not allowed to see the new meal plan.
“We wanted to know about their meal plan in case one of our children has an allergic reaction, so it will be easier to treat as we will know what the child has eaten when consulting, but we were not given the meal plan. We then discovered that the new meal plan is not healthy and has items like drink-o-pop, it is unhealthy and not well balanced for the children”, said concerned parent, Khutso Chiloane.
The school is also accused of not holding general meetings with all parents, as they fear parents like John and Khutso will raise the issues that they have and make other parents aware of the issues in the school. So individual parent and teacher meetings are held. The committee also allegedly has no parents serving on it, nor has any parents involved. It basically comprised of family members of the principal and the election process did not include any of the parents.
Furthermore, it is alleged that when the management realized that the parents were beginning to find out what is going on in the school, they called all the black teachers to find out who had been giving information about the school to the parents and further instructed them to not speak to parents or to each other about the school’s issues.
John Modipane told Phalaborwa Herald that they were called in to speak to the Chairman of the committee, Franscois Pretorius, who accused him and his wife of threatening teachers at the school and told them that he would take out an interim protection order against them.
The interim protection order which was delivered over to him last week Thursday at his home in Namakgale, stated he should appear in court on March 10.
The two parents have since removed their two children from the school.
Teachers at the day care centre corroborated the story and told Phalaborwa Herald that the meal plan at the school did in fact change and the meal plan that they show parents is outdated.
They further indicated that they have told some parents about the issues in the day care centre, urging them to do something about it.
We contacted the school principal, Elsabe Gebhardt and Chairman of service management, Franscois Pretorius.
“Things work differently here at this Day care centre. In a government school there is a school governing body run by the parents but with the SAVF it is a bit different, we have a service committee that runs and manages the school, comprised of volunteers that do not earn a salary.
It was stated specifically that there should not be any parents on the service committee. We operate like a private school, we set out our rules and decisions and the client reads it and decides if he/she will enrol their child here and if they do not agree, it is a problem because we cannot chop and change rules. We have to adhere to the rules that come from the head office.
When we saw that there was a problem, that parents had an issue but would not come forward, we contacted our head office and informed them and a letter from the regional manager was written to parents informing them of how the day care functions and why there are no general parent meetings held.
Mr Modipane wanted to take things further and he was having an argument with the teachers which we thought was intimidating to the children and teachers and we were forced to take out a protection order against him.
He is still allowed to bring his child to the school and we never said his child is not welcome here, he was not denied access to the school grounds. We also stated that he is welcome to give feedback and write any complaints and we never received any.
Regarding the meal plan, we did refuse to give him the meal because, at cost we developed that meal plan in connection with Discovery Health, so we do not want to give it to anybody else as it is part of our intellectual property and it costs us money.
Parents are also welcome to come and inspect while the children are having their meals. We had an issue with the procurement of the normal juice that we normally purchase and we no longer serve the Drink-o-Pop to the children”, said Service Committee Chairman, Franscois Pretorius.
Principal, Elsabe Gebhardt, further stated that teachers were told not to talk to the parents regarding the issues at the school as they want formal practice and to coordinate information.
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