PENINSULA Grammar made 13 non-teaching roles redundant in a major staffing shake-up before this week’s resumption of the second term.
The school has also abolished the position of deputy principal – wellbeing, held by Peter Ford.
The cuts were foreshadowed last week by news that the Mt Eliza private school’s student numbers were being “greatly impacted by the global pandemic” (“Grammar cuts staff as pandemic bites” The News 19/5/20).
Principal Stuart Johnston said that he had “made the difficult decision to commence a staff consultation process that will potentially impact” staff numbers.
The 13 jobs lost were four in the marketing department, seven in administration and two in property (school productions and events).
“This has not been an easy process for us. For every one of these roles there exists a person whose dignity, and whose privacy, we will continue to respect,” Mr Johnston said in a letter to students’ parents on Friday (22 May). “The confidentiality of this process remains of paramount importance to us as a proud school community, and we will continue to protect this.”
Mr Johnston said while the “decisions and departures are difficult, they have been taken to maintain and safeguard the school’s strong financial position and highest standards of teaching and education amid a crisis that is unprecedented in our lives”.
Changes to the whole school structure in the past year had seen the “redistribution and refinement of all components and functions within the wellbeing portfolio”.
First published in the Mornington News – 26 May 2020
