A WOMAN whose daughter suffers a learning disability has lodged a complaint with the WA equal opportunity commission claiming her children were unfairly expelled from the Beehive Montessori school in Mosman Park.

Yungalily says her children were kicked out after she’d complained teachers had failed to recognise her daughter’s dyslexia in the four years she’d attended the school.

The artist, a founding member of the school’s reconciliation action plan, had also complained her daughter had been unable to understand an overseas-born literacy support teacher assigned to her.

Yungalily says a meeting held in August last year to discuss her daughter’s progress went off the rails when a teacher who was present upset her daughter.

“Things blew out of context then,” she says. “After my daughter became upset I called the meeting off, thinking it would be better to start afresh the next day.

“There were four teachers, the deputy principal and my daughter.

“As I got up to walk out with my daughter the deputy told one of the teachers to take my daughter outside, but I was to stay. That’s when the deputy told me I had breached the school’s code of conduct.”

• Yungalily and her children have been told they are no longer welcome at the Beehive Montessori school. Photo by Eddie Albrecht

Yungalily says she was told her criticism, in particular of the literacy support teacher, and her “talking in the carpark with other parents” were behind the expulsions.

“I’m just an outspoken blackfella trying to do the best for my kids,” she told the Herald.

She says the ban lacks compassion, considering her family’s difficult history. She is a member of the stolen generation.

“I wanted to break that cycle of [incomplete education] which is why I opted for Montessori and better education. I don’t think the school gave my family a fair go.”

Yungalily says as the year progressed “there were more and more heated words” between herself and the principal.

“I don’t know why they went down this path … they refused external mediation, I was given the news of my banning by a private investigator at 7.15am which was big shock to me and the kids.”

Beehive deputy chair Bettina Mangan says due process was followed and that mediation had been offered and refused. She says she can’t comment further as it’s a “confidential matter to protect the family and children”.

Both children now attend a government school and Yungalily says they are content.

by EDDIE ALBRECHT