{"id":429099,"date":"2026-01-22T03:28:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T03:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/429099\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T03:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T03:28:09","slug":"somerville-house-school-principal-sandra-hastie-announces-resignation-after-leaking-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/429099\/","title":{"rendered":"Somerville House school principal Sandra Hastie announces resignation after leaking scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

A prestigious Brisbane girls’ school principal will resign, following a scandal where teachers uploaded personal comments about students <\/a>to an unsecured internet server.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Thursday Somerville House sent letters to parents informing them that Dr Sandra Hastie would be stepping down in April due to “family reasons”.<\/p>\n

The letter, sent by chief executive officer Alan Swanson, did not explain what those “reasons” were.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Sandra Hastie’s last day at the school will be on August 3.\u00a0 (Supplied: LinkedIn)<\/p>\n

“After much consideration, Dr Hastie has made the decision to step down from her role at the end of Term 1, 2026,” the letter said.<\/p>\n

“The Somerville House staff, School Advisory Council and all of us at the Presbyterian and Methodist Schools Association respect and support her decision.”<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Somerville House teachers wrote notes about incoming year 7 students in 2021. (Supplied: Somerville House)<\/p>\n

The letter told parents Dr Hastie was moving to New Zealand to become the executive principal for the Diocesan School for Girls in Auckland.<\/p>\n

The letter said the school would start recruiting for a new principal, and an interim principal would be appointed in the meantime.<\/p>\n

The announcement comes after students discovered a “dirt file<\/a>” document that teachers had uploaded to a publicly accessible Microsoft Teams server.<\/p>\n

The document contained comments from teachers, judging the physical appearance and personalities of students and parents.<\/p>\n

612 ABC Radio Brisbane reached out to the school to ask the reason for the resignation, and whether it was related to the leaks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A prestigious Brisbane girls’ school principal will resign, following a scandal where teachers uploaded personal comments about students…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[224943,43,44,224942,224941,224940,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-429099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-dossier-leak","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-presbyterian-and-methodist-schools-association","tag-sandra-hastie","tag-somerville-hosue","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}