BRENDAN ROANE
TWELVE staff members of a Joburg school were given “IOUs” instead of their July paycheque, while their pension funds have been misused to pay salaries until now.
However, the entire finance department of Sandringham High School (SHS) has also been retrenched, causing fears that no money will come in to pay this month’s salaries or pension funds owed to retrenched staff members.
In total, 12 staff members were informed they would be retrenched last week, including seven school governing body (SGB) teachers, three finance department employees, a social worker and the school’s caretaker.
Five reliable sources at the school, who did not want to be named, told The Star the retrenched SGB teachers received “IOUs” for their July salary and were told they would be paid when the school “had enough money”.
Sandringham was once rated in the top 500 schools in SA.
The staff's pension funds have also allegedly been used incorrectly for the last four months in a bid to keep the school afloat.
The school allegedly deducted money for pensions from SGB teachers’ pay, but did not transfer this money into their pension funds for four months. This was confirmed by Wonderboy Peters, chairman of the Sandringham High governing body.
He said this was done because of the school’s financial problems and that they needed to use the pension money to pay the salaries of the SGB teachers.
Peters said pensions had already been “prioritised” and they aimed to pay them by the end of next month.
The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) has confirmed this and said two months’ deductions had been transferred to the pensions, while the other two months were still outstanding.
However, the sources said they were not aware of this and wanted to know where the money to pay for a backlog of pension funds and July salaries would come from, especially without a finance department to chase up unpaid fees.
Despite being given IOUs instead of a paycheque, the teachers were allegedly asked to “be professional” and to keep teaching until the end of next month, without guaranteed pay.
Sandringham High has been struggling with financial difficulties since its principal, Logan Naidoo, was suspended on allegations of financial mismanagement in March, pending the outcome of a forensic audit.
The Star reported in February that Naidoo was accused of soliciting bribes from parents in return for securing places for their children at the school.
He was also accused of blackmailing a publisher and said the school would source its textbooks from another company unless it received “something” in return.
The GDE is yet to release the results of the forensic audit.
GDE spokesman Charles Phalane said: “The suspension of the principal should not affect the finances of the school. There are clear procedures on managing finances and a new SGB has been appointed.”
Meanwhile, matric pupils will have to have their timetables changed, just a few weeks from their preliminary exams, while the remaining teachers will have to take on extra workloads.
One of the retrenched staff members is said by a pupil to be the only teacher in that subject at the school.
Sources believe teachers accept the management of the school had tried its best, but that the governing body had made significant errors and it was these that had resulted in the financial crisis.