
1	Home	Background	eMails	Board	Contact

Board of Trustees

Below is the reply by the Board of Trustees to our complaint about Nikki Shakeshaft.
It was a poorly composed whitewash which deliberately avoided
discussing the inappropriate behaviour of Nikki Shakeshaft.

Instead they undertook a character assassination
against our son designed to scare us into silence.

Following on from their letter you will see our detailed rebuttal.
It takes their letter apart and shows the school to be wrong in every aspect.

It is this rebuttal that they refuse to discuss because they
know that they are in the wrong but lack the integrity to admit it.

So if you are thinking of enrolling a child at Taradale Intermediate School
Then take this into consideration.

If you have the temerity to raise a matter of concern with the
school, then the board will quite happily launch a slanderous
attack on your child rather than deal with the matter.

<==========================>

Letter from the Board of Trustees

Note: The issue here is not the behaviour of the children involved and we have blanked out their names where they occur.

Dear Mr and Mrs McNally

In response to your correspondence recently, The Board of Trustees of Taradale Intermediate School have discussed your concerns regarding your son.
A personnel committee has met and we have decided the following:

We support the decisions made by Mrs Nikki Shakeshaft re your son not going to Palmerston North with the group who have trained regularly for this event.
The Life Education Trust has very recently completed a programme with all the students educating them on how to make responsible decisions and that there are consequences for actions. The school also regularly stresses to all students the importance of attending all practices etc and if that if it is not possible to attend then they should be communicating any problems with the teacher responsible or their class teacher. The drama activity is a lunchtime event where a teacher gives up their time voluntarily and is additional to their normal teaching role.
We see the ***Girl2*** incident as unprovoked. We believe your son knows there are consequences from every action and while this was not during drama club it was of a serious nature.
The view of this sub-committee is that an internal stand down was extremely lenient given the circumstances.
The unpredictability of your son's behaviour is a cause for concern, hence we support the decision not to take him to Palmerston North for the cultural exchange.

We appreciate the support you have shown towards this school and look forward to that continuing through to the end of this year.

Yours sincerely

Warwick Thomas, BoT Chairperson

<==========================>

Our rebuttal to the above letter

Mr Warwick,

Thank you for your letter of 13 September concerning the behaviour of Nikki Shakeshaft.

The very first question I have to ask is this:-
Before fabricating your reply, did you even bother to read what we had written about Nikki Shakeshaft?

Your letter goes to great lengths to discuss the behaviour of our son.

From the outset we have made it perfectly clear that the degree to which he reacted to the bullying was wrong. But the issue at hand is Nikki Shakeshaft's inability to function in a controlled and professional manner. You have singularly avoided addressing any of the issues that we raised about her.

We will respond to your comments as you listed them.
I suggest you read our reply in conjunction with a copy of the emails that we sent to Mrs Shakeshaft.

We support the decisions made by Mrs Nikki Shakeshaft re your son not going to Palmerston North with the group who have trained regularly for this event.

It appears that neither Shakeshaft nor yourself can decide exactly why he has been dropped from the trip.

The incident where ***Girl-2*** was injured had been dealt with Mrs Karen Hogg.

She did so very correctly and very promptly. Counselling our son on his actions and contacting ourselves 'immediately' to explain the facts of the incident as she knew them and explaining that as a consequence he would be internally excluded for two days. We expressed our disappointment at his behaviour and made it clear that we fully supported the school on taking this action.

It was later (and separately from Mrs Hogg) that Mrs Shakeshaft approached him and told him that she was very angry about the injury to ***Girl-2*** because it meant that she had had to find an alternate for a soccer match. That as a consequence she was considering his suitability for the Palmerston North trip.

She later informed him that he had indeed been dropped from the trip but did not elaborate further. This left our son to believe, quite understandably, that he was being dropped purely because of Shakeshaft's anger at having been inconvenienced.
It was only after we took her to task for her unilateral actions that she decides that he hadn't been attending Drama Club regularly. That he has only attended 4 out of 16 practice sessions.

As I clearly pointed out in my reply of 04/09/2010, there hadn't been 16 Tuesdays since July. We want to see a schedule of those '16' practices between July and the 4th of September. (Or are we to assume that this is why Mrs Shakeshaft teaches Drama instead of Mathematics?)

Further, even if he were not attending the practice sessions (which does not appear to be the case) it is Mrs Shakeshaft's behaviour that is in question here.

a/ If he was being dropped because ***Girl-2*** had been injured then why wasn't this done through Mrs Hogg who was dealing with the incident?

b/ Why was it done separately by Mrs Shakeshaft, in anger and without giving a proper explanation of why he was being dropped?.

c/ If he was being dropped because his lack of commitment to the Drama Club, why had this lack of commitment not been communicated earlier to him?
(she saw him regularly enough through the rehearsals for Beauty and the Beast)

d/ Why did she have neither the professionalism nor the common courtesy to contact us and explain?

e/ Why did our son's lack of commitment to Drama Club only come to light as a convenient prop after we had had the audacity to question her motives?

I would like to make it clear here that we are not looking to have him re-instated on the trip. In fact, given Shakeshaft's vindictive nature we would like our son to have as little to do with her as possible.

Might I also point out that if you are defending Mrs Shakeshaft's actions in adding to the sanctions already imposed by Mrs Hogg then you are in fact finding fault with Mrs Hogg's handling of the matter.
The Life Education Trust has very recently completed a programme with all the students educating them on how to make responsible decisions and that there are consequences for actions. The school also regularly stresses to all students the importance of attending all practices etc and if that if it is not possible to attend then they should be communicating any problems with the teacher responsible or their class teacher. The drama activity is a lunchtime event where a teacher gives up their time voluntarily and is additional to their normal teaching role.

You say that 'if it is not possible to attend then they should be communicating any problems with the teacher responsible'. But communication should be a two way process. Despite regularly seeing our son, and the ease with which she could have contacted us, Mrs Shakeshaft didn't bother to communicate his lack of commitment until after her behaviour was questioned.

When it comes to the importance of 'attending all practices' there is still the question of the 16 Tuesday's between July and the 4th of September.

We still want to see the schedule of those practice sessions.
(As far as Jake is concerned, he missed two rehearsals. The first one because the notice didn't arrive at his class in time and one other when he was off sick).
We see the ***Girl-2*** incident as unprovoked. We believe your son knows there are consequences from every action and while this was not during drama club it was of a serious nature.

Interesting one this.

If the incident was, as you say, 'unprovoked' then why did he receive a written apology from ***Girl-1***, whose initial actions created the situation in which led to ***Girl-2*** being injured?

If she and ***Boy-1*** hadn't been bullying him then he wouldn't have been trying to get his property back and thus been in the situation where ***Girl-2*** was injured.

I don't know about ***Girl-1***, but I do know that ***Boy-1*** is on the Palmerston North trip. It is interesting to note that when Shakeshaft had her hissy fit she saw fit to drop our son from the trip but not ***Boy-1***!

So. When you talk of our son understanding 'the consequences of his actions', he can presumably conclude that you can do what you like as long as you are in favour with Shakeshaft.

If you insist that his actions were 'unprovoked' then there are only two possible conclusions we can make. Either you are ignoring the facts because it suits you or you were too lazy to properly investigate the matter.
The view of this sub-committee is that an internal stand down was extremely lenient given the circumstances.

If you believe that an internal stand down was 'extremely lenient given the circumstances.' then you must be questioning Mrs Hogg's handling of the incident?

In any case it is not the fact that our son was dropped from the trip in addition to the internal stand down that is the issue here.

The issue is Nikki Shakeshaft's unprofessional behaviour.
Acting in anger, unilaterally and with poor (one might even say non-existent) communication to either ourselves or to our son.

As we have already said to her (and as you would have seen if you had bothered to read my emails to her), "what was the point of punishing Jake if it wasn't made clear to him why he was being punished?".
The unpredictability of your son's behaviour is a cause for concern, hence we support the decision not to take him to Palmerston North for the cultural exchange.

The phrase 'The unpredictability of your son's behaviour is a cause for concern.' suggests that there is an on-going problem with his behaviour.

If this is the case then the school has seriously failed in its duty toward both him and ourselves. Because nothing of the sort has been communicated to us.

There is also the fact that it was only as recent as July that he was 'invited' to join the group going to Palmerston North. Obviously 'The unpredictability of your son's behaviour' was not, at that time 'a cause for concern.'

So if there is an on-going problem with his behaviour that is 'a cause for concern.'

a/ Why is this the first we hear of it?

b/ Why was he invited on the trip in the first place?

No your comments here appear to be a squalid attempt to smear him so as to divert attention from a teacher acting inappropriately, or to scare us into silence. (Particularly since you describe the incident as 'unprovoked' when there is evidence to the contrary).

But I am afraid as a strategy it will not work. We have taken legal advice and I suggest you either retract that statement or support your statement with facts and fully explain to us why the school has failed to bring his behaviour to our attention previously.

I would also like you to explain why it has only been brought to our attention after we have had the temerity to make a complaint about Mrs Shakeshaft.

Furthermore, it is now necessary for us to see our son's school records to ensure that he hasn't been slandered there as well.

I will also make it my business to ensure that parents who are considering sending their children to Taradale Intermediate are made aware of the consequences for their children should they be so reckless as to raise a matter of concern with the Board of Trustees.

Regards, John and Judith McNally

<==============================>

So there you have it:-
If you find the need to complain,
they will ignore the complaint and attack your child!

Note:
We had to involve a solicitor before they would comply with our request to view son's school records.
We have now seen the records and they still detail the incident as an 'unprovoked' attack by him.

<==============================>