TWO vice-principals at St George’s College in Kingston have been asked to resign, effective Monday, in an administrative shake-up at the 153 year-old high school for boys.

At the same time, Principal Lloyd Fearon’s performance is now under review as the school board has expressed dissatisfaction with the way the school is being run.

Vice-principals Alan Lawson and Lovlet Edwards on Monday received notices to quit after an executive board meeting on the school’s North Street campus. Both posts are now being advertised on the school’s notice board, to be filled for September 2003.

The vice-principals were asked to resign, school officials said, because the executive board felt that the school’s administration was ineffective.

“We are at this stage extremely concerned in the way the school is run,” said Donovan Chen-See, acting school board chairman. “We are concerned… that we are not better than last year’s performance and we are not pleased where we are at. Right now, Fearon is answering questions from the board, he is saying what difference can be seen this year as opposed to last year.”

Chen-See declined to say specifically which areas of the administration’s performance troubled the board. But school officials told the Observer that only 76 of the 220 students in the fifth form were eligible for last Sunday’s graduation.

At the same time, officials said that nine teachers had left the school since January because they were demoralised by “the overbearing leadership style” of the chairman and president of the school board, Father Ted Dziak. Dziak was said to be in Belize on vacation, having left on Wednesday after finalising the changes to the school’s administration.

However, the shake-up is being resisted and the two affected vice-principals have sought the intervention of the Ministry of Education, sources said.

Neither the education ministry nor the vice-principals were available for comment yesterday. But according to Chen-See, the board has acted “in accordance with the ministry’s regulations”. The ministry, he said, appoints the school’s teachers but the school appoints its administrators.

“No teacher has been fired,” he stressed.

Apparently the school answers to both the education ministry and the Society of Jesuits, an international body that bought the land on which the school sits in February 1905.

“We conform with the ministry because they give us grants but the Jesuits also have regulation which we have to follow,” Chen-See said.

But Pauline Harper, board member and teacher representative, believes that there was secrecy surrounding the proposed changes. She was not asked, she said, for her input when the changes were being proposed and she also felt that it was also done hastily.

“If they felt that they were doing the move above-board then why not let the decision be by the entire board,” asked Harper, who said that only the board’s executive members were party to the discussions with Fearon.

Chen-See, however, rejected her claim.

“We have nothing to hide. If we did, we would not have had the meeting at the school but in a private hotel,” he said.

On Wednesday, some concerned parents of the Home and Teacher Association expressed fear that the changes would negatively affect the over 1,400 students at the school.

“It is the students who are the ones who will suffer from all of this, not the administration,” said one concerned mother of the Home School Association (similar to the PTA).