Government cuts to early childhood education funding are being blamed for two redundancies at Montessori Children's House Wanaka, a move that has angered parents who say they were not consulted about the job losses.
After a recent strategic review, the centre's board of trustees made head teacher Anne-Marie Love and centre manager Richard Cubie redundant, because of financial difficulties.
Board chairman Tim Hudson said Ministry of Education funding cuts to early childhood education announced in last year's Budget necessitated cost-saving measures at the centre.
"The review undertaken last year highlighted that our management costs were overweight relative to the size of the centre," Mr Hudson said.
Offering a voluntary redundancy option to the centre's management "wasn't appropriate" because neither of the former roles could be easily extended to incorporate the other.
Instead, a new managing teacher position was created and advertised nationally by the board.
The centre's problems were brought to the public's attention by a series of puzzling and allegorical messages published in a local circular earlier this month, while a group of parents, angry about the lack of consultation with the wider Montessori community on the restructuring, demanded answers from the board.
Mr Hudson said the board accepted its "biggest mistake" in the restructuring process was not consulting the Wanaka Montessori's parent community.
"That's something we're working through now," he said.
"We would like to move from a position where we're explaining our actions to actually delivering a solution so that the centre can stabilise and move forward."
A parent, who asked not to be named, said parents were "completely behind the board" in its decision to undertake a restructuring for the centre's benefit, "but not the manner in which it was done".
"Anne-Marie has been at the centre since it started and Richard and Anne-Marie have been a good partnership for the last 15 months or so, and that suddenly disappeared," the parent said.
All parties involved wanted to work together to retain the same positive environment for families in the future.
"We're working with the board to remedy the lack of trust that's occurred as a result of [the redundancies]," the parent said.
Two meetings have been held between Montessori parents and the board.
The most recent was last Sunday, which Mr Hudson described as "really constructive".
The board had been asked to address parents' concerns about the lack of an interim head teacher who could answer their "day-to-day questions" and to review the job description for the newly created position, the parent told the Otago Daily Times.
Mr Hudson said the board would respond to parents by the end of this week.
Ms Love was the founding head teacher of Wanaka Montessori 13 years ago and Mr Cubie had been in his role for 15 months. Both declined to comment.
