Employment lawyer Peter MacDonald was engaged by the MOE in May and asked then principal Lyn Cooper to leave her position in September.
Since then, Mrs Cooper lodged a claim with the Employment Relations Authority, was rehired as principal and then resigned last Friday.
Mr MacDonald yesterday told the Otago Daily Times he was satisfied with the results and hoped to move on to the process of finding a new principal.
Mr MacDonald was hired as a result of a damning report by the Educational Review Office (ERO) outlining "divisions in communication within the senior management structure".
Appointed in May to work with the school's senior managers after an ERO review identified a lack of trust among staff members, he then released a "proposal for change" to staff on September 8. No resolution was reached and Mrs Cooper was asked to leave later in the month.
At the time, Mr MacDonald said he was employed to resolve "issues that possess significant risks to smooth operations of the school and the wellbeing of staff and potentially students", as stated in the ERO report.
Since Mrs Cooper was removed, the school had had two stand-in principals: deputy principal Grant Adolph and former James Hargest High School principal Paul O'Connor.
Mr O'Connor was returning in 2012 for at least term one and Mr MacDonald said he was keen to see him stay as long as it took to hire the permanent principal.
"He is now officially acting principal. Ideally, we'd like him to be there until the new principal commences."
He said the process would be undertaken by him and the board of trustees and could take as long as four months from the beginning of the 2012 school year.
"February and March we will be recruiting and selecting."
The new principal would be sought from within both New Zealand and offshore.
"We'll be concentrating on the New Zealand market, but it could well be someone found overseas and returning."
