Saturday, October 2, 2010

Strange staffing practices continue at Carenne

Despite coming under fire for employing friends and family over others, using nepotistic procedures when filling permanent positions and allowing a teacher who wasn't approved by the Department of Education and Training to teach for a number of weeks, senior staff at Carenne are still resorting to truly bizarre staffing practices.

It has been learned that on Tuesday the 21st of September, Lucy Thornton declared she was relieving for School Administration Officer Rhonda Griffiths and paid accordingly, despite relieving School Learning Support Officer Simone Russell who was working in the office in Ms Griffith's place. It appears that executive staff at Carenne neglected to consider what would of happened if Mrs Thornton had been injured or if a student was injured, because as far as anyone knew, Mrs Thornton was working in the office.

Even more bizarrely, Anne Baskerville's SLSO was away for the day and because Sue Sewell was working on another class that day, she arranged to have a 16 year-old female student from Laurie Healey's classroom assist her for the day. The school executive and in particular Laurie Healey allowed a disabled 16 year-old student to assist a teacher with looking after six high-support needs students.

During term 2, Anne Baskerville sucessfully had Neil Moon employ another aide for the class as she claimed the workload and supervision required in that room showed that it was necessary. For most of term 2, the class was supervised by three adults. Mr Moon terminated funding for this arrangement in term 3, and despite Ms Baskerville's claims that the room needs three adults, she allowed a 16 year-old student to work as an aide.

These strange and bizarre staffing practices show that under the school's current leadership there remain serious issues which the department has not attempted to address.