Early exit

(MARGO CLARKE telling the commission of inquiry about problems at Alexandra.)

By Ricky Jordan | Thu, July 26, 2012 - 12:11 AM

MARGO CLARKE, former head of The Alexandra School’s English department, said she retired early because principal Jeff Broomes showed intense hostility towards her and even said he hated her.

Describing him as a “workplace bully”, Clarke, who taught at Alexandra for 29 years before retiring in 2009, said working with Broomes had adversely affected her health and she therefore decided to leave her beloved school in the interest of her physical, mental and spiritual well-being.

“I actually had to unravel Alexandra from around my heart before I retired,” she told the Commission of Inquiry into the St Peter secondary school at the Gymnasium of the Garfield Sobers Sports Complex.

Clarke said when Broomes came to the school in 2002 he was welcomed with open arms and handed a well run institution where staff lived like family, but he did not appreciate it and said he would “run his own school and would not allow the deputy principal to run it as she did under former principal Erwin Brathwaite”.

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