The only secondary school in Queenstown announced yesterday the ministry-appointed Christchurch employment lawyer Peter MacDonald as a "limited statutory manager".
Mr MacDonald will be granted the powers of the board around the specific area of employment.
He will work alongside trustees while protecting the board and staff members, board chairman Alistair Nicholson said yesterday.
A limited statutory manager is one of six interventions that can applied at the governance level of a school by the Secretary for Education, at the direction of the minister of education.
Interventions are only made in schools where there is "reasonable grounds to believe there is risk to the operation of the school, or the welfare or educational performance of their students," ministry literature stated.
"We had our ERO (Education Review Office) report at the beginning of the year," Mr Nicholson said.
"They identified the school was doing a great job at the coal face with the teachers, but there were issues at the senior management level which were seriously impacting the sustainability of what the teachers were doing.
"They didn't spell out what those issues were, so we went to the Ministry of Education [to say] we need help.
"The board does not have the skills."
Mr Nicholson said it was "incredibly difficult" for trustees to identify what the ERO issues were, without undermining industrial relations, given the way schools were set up.
"This should have minimal impact on the students and staff day to day," he said.
"The board is very happy to have the assistance from the ministry on this issue."
ERO southern region review services national manager Graham Randell reported in February stress over funding in the wake of last year's curriculum reshuffle was a cause of strained relations between senior management and staff in the decile-10 high school.
