Ouerraad

Show the parents the numbers

Elna Bezuidenhout, standing for the Laerskool Rietspruit governing body. Voting is on Thursday 12 September in the school hall.

Why I am standing

Voting closes Thursday 12 September

The parents’ roll closes at 14h00 on Friday 5 September — check that your name is on it at the front office. Voting is in the school hall on Rooikrans Street, 06h45 to 08h15 and again 13h30 to 18h00. One parent, one vote, ID book or card in your hand.

I will not vote on a budget line I have not read. The minutes of every meeting go up on the noticeboard by the Friday, in Afrikaans and English, with the figures left in. And if a parent asks me what something cost, I will find out and tell them, even when the number is embarrassing.
Elna Bezuidenhout · parent, Grade 4 and Grade 7

Why I am standing

I have had children at Rietspruit for nine years. I am a bookkeeper by trade — I do the books for four small businesses in Krugersdorp West — and I have counted the athletics day float and the tuckshop takings more Saturdays than I care to remember. Last year I asked the office, politely and in writing, what the school fee income was actually spent on. It took eleven weeks and three follow-ups, and what came back was one page with four lines on it. I do not think anybody was hiding anything. I think this is a governing body that has simply stopped expecting to be asked. So I am standing. Not because the school is badly run — the teaching here is good and I will say that anywhere — but because a school with six hundred and forty children and a R2.3 million budget deserves minutes a parent can read and a treasurer who answers an email inside a week. I am not on anybody’s slate and nobody is funding this. The pamphlet that came home in your child’s bag cost me R840 at the printers on Ontdekkers.

What a governing body may actually decide

Not the teaching. The Schools Act gives the body the admission policy, the language policy, the code of conduct, the school fees and the exemption applications, the appointment recommendations that go to the district, and the upkeep of the buildings and grounds.

We recommend; the Head of Department appoints. We propose a fee; the parents’ meeting approves it. We do not run a classroom and we cannot hire or fire a teacher. Anybody promising you otherwise on a pamphlet is asking for a vote they have no way of spending.

Where last year’s money went

Rietspruit took in R2 148 000 in fees in 2025 against a budget of R2 310 000 — short by R162 000, which is roughly what fifty-four full exemptions cost the school. The department paid its allocation of R394 000 in two tranches, the second only in October, which is why the October creditors ran late.

Salaries for the eleven governing-body posts — two Grade R practitioners, four assistants, the groundsman, two admin ladies and two coaches — came to R1 386 000. That is sixty-four cents in every rand the school collects. Electricity and water were R211 000 and climbing. Learner support material was R148 000. Sport and culture, buses included, was R176 000.

Which leaves R121 000 for maintenance on thirty-one classrooms, two fields and a roof patched three times since 2021. R94 000 of it went on the ablution block behind the Grade 3s and R27 000 on fencing, and then it was finished. There was no maintenance plan. There should be one, costed, three years out, on the wall where parents can see it.

Six things I will push for

Not a manifesto. Six things a governing body can actually do inside a three-year term.

The budget on one page

One page every term: what came in, what went out, what is left, and the three biggest items. Printed for the noticeboard and emailed to every address on the roll. No sixty-page annexure that nobody opens.

Clear the exemption backlog

Fifty-one exemption applications were still unanswered in June. Every one of those is a family that does not know what it owes. A standing exemptions sub-committee, meeting monthly, answering inside thirty days.

A code applied the same way twice

The code of conduct is fine. The application of it is not. Every hearing minuted, the same sanction for the same thing whoever the child is, and a parent allowed to bring somebody into the room with them.

A costed maintenance plan

The roof, the ablution blocks, the fencing on the Rooikrans side and the Grade R playground. Two quotes on each, ranked in order, funded out of a maintenance line that is set aside before anything else is spent.

Meetings parents can get to

Meetings at 17h30, not 14h00 on a working Wednesday. Agenda out five days beforehand. Minutes on the noticeboard by the Friday, in both languages, with the rand figures still in them.

An answer inside a week

Every parent email acknowledged in two days and answered in seven — or told honestly why it will take longer and when. My number is on the pamphlet and I pick it up.

Get the weekly note

One email every Wednesday until the vote: what the governing body did that week, what I asked for and could not get, and what is on the agenda next. About four hundred words. Nothing else, and the whole list is deleted on 13 September.

Put me on the list

Ten minutes on the exemption backlog

Filmed at my kitchen table on a Sunday, one take, nothing cut. What a fee exemption actually is, how the sliding scale works, what a school may and may not do while an application is sitting on someone’s desk, and why fifty-one of them were still open in June.

Endorsements

Elna did our co-op books for six years and I never once had to ask her twice for a figure. If she says the numbers will go up on the wall, they will go up on the wall.
Willem Kruger · Parent, Grade 6 · Krugersdorp West
I applied for an exemption in February and heard nothing until August. Elna sat with my forms at her own kitchen table and explained the sliding scale to me in twenty minutes. Nobody at the school had done that.
Nomsa Sithole · Parent, Grade 2 and Grade 5
I served two terms on this governing body and I am not standing again. She asks the questions I stopped asking somewhere in the second year. Vote for her.
Hennie Coetzee · Governing body member, 2019–2025
She ran the athletics day cash-up for four years and it balanced to the cent every single year. That is the entire job description, really.
Rina Maartens · Chair, Rietspruit tuckshop committee

What parents need to know

Every parent or legal guardian of a child at Rietspruit is on the roll — fees paid or not, exemption or not. Nobody may be kept off it for owing the school money, and if your name is missing the office must add it right up until the roll closes at 14h00 on Friday 5 September.

Both parents vote. Two parents of one child are two votes, and a guardian the child actually lives with votes as well. Bring an ID book, card or passport. There is no proxy and no postal vote — you have to walk in.

Seven parent members are elected for three years. Parents must outnumber the staff and learner members put together, which is the whole point of the arrangement: the parents hold the majority on the body that sets the fee.

How the vote actually works

Nominations closed on 22 August. Fourteen parents were nominated and eleven accepted, so there are eleven names on the ballot for seven seats. You mark up to seven of them, not one. Marking fewer is fine; marking more spoils the paper.

The hall opens at 06h45 so people can vote on the way to work, closes over the school day, and opens again from 13h30 to 18h00. The presiding officer comes from the district office, not from the school. Counting starts at 18h15 in the hall and any parent may stay and watch it.

The result is read out that night and posted at the gate on Friday morning. If fewer than fifteen percent of the roll turns up, the meeting is adjourned and the whole thing runs again a week later — which is exactly what happened in 2023.

Get involved

Laerskool Rietspruit, Rooikrans Street, Krugersdorp West 1739 Voting in the school hall, Thursday 12 September: 06h45–08h15 and 13h30–18h00 082 447 1063 · elna@ouerraad.co.za The campaign takes no money — not from parents, not from businesses, not from anybody. What I do need is time. Forty minutes handing out pamphlets at the gate, an hour sitting with a family filling in an exemption form, or a lift for a neighbour to the hall on the twelfth.

How can you help?