Cape Town - South Peninsula High School principal Brian Isaacs has been officially fired.
On Friday Education MEC Debbie Schafer dismissed the outspoken principal’s appeal against his dismissal, ending Isaacs’s more than 30-year tenure as head of the school.
Isaacs said on Friday he was not ready to comment.
He was dismissed in June after being found guilty of charges of misconduct in the workplace.
“Isaacs was found guilty of giving false statements concerning his employer in terms of the Employment of Educators Act.
“The presiding officer found Isaacs guilty of two charges of disrespect or abusive or insolent behaviour towards officials and not guilty of issuing an unlawful instruction to a staff member,” the education department said in a statement.
The charges stemmed from an incident in which Isaacs shouted at the then-circuit manager, a Mr Naidoo, who was delivering a notice for a disciplinary hearing to the school’s secretary.
Isaacs allegedly shouted at Naidoo to “leave my school”, also calling him a “spineless creature and spineless bureaucrat”.
Isaacs was also found guilty of bringing the department into disrepute following the publication of a letter to the Cape Argus in which he charged that the department used “children to attack teachers”.
Published on November 2, 2015, Isaacs’s letter blamed the department for ill-discipline in schools, saying he had “experienced the rudeness and smugness of department officials and presiding officers”.
Dismissing his appeal, Schafer said “no reasons were advanced as to why the factual findings which were made were incorrect”.
Isaacs was principal of South Peninsula High for 32 years, but the MEC said “the presiding officer said in his findings that long service and good results of the school could not be used as an excuse to justify blatant misconduct”.
Weekend Argus