Colmont School administrators sacked

ADMINISTRATORS appointed to Kilmore’s Colmont School were sacked this afternoon, with creditors voting to appoint a different firm, Cor Cordis.

More than 140 people attended the first creditors meeting via videolink, with parents, teachers and businesses who were owed money by the school attending.

Any creditors who lodged a claim for money owed to them were given voting rights at the meeting.

Skywriters Pty Ltd, who are landlords of the school after purchasing the land and buildings, requested a change in administrators from Ian Grant and Paul Langdon of insolvency firm Vince and Associates, who were appointed by the school’s former board on July 26.

A statement shown during the meeting from Chien-long Tai, a director of Skywriters Pty Ltd and Victorian International Enterprises Pty Ltd, said:

“The landlords continue to support the school returning to full operations.

“Given the above and failure of the current voluntary administrators to accept the landlords’ offer of support, the landlords consider that new administrators, who are prepared to consider rent relief and funding proposals, should be appointed.

“The landlords have requested that Rachel Burdett and Bruce Secatore of Cor Cordis provide their consent to act as voluntary administrators of the school and will seek a resolution for their appointment at the first creditors meeting for the school on Friday, 5 August, 2022.”

The proposal to replace administrators passed with 100 votes in favour, 34 against and 10 people abstaining.

The three-hour-plus meeting was riddled with IT issues, with creditors not being able to vote via a poll function, and people acting as proxies not being counted for all the people they represented.

At the outset of the meeting administrators from Vince and Associates listed all creditors who had submitted a claim and the amount owed to each – most were either teachers and staff owed entitlements or parents who had paid school fees.

The largest amount owed was to Skywriters and Victorian International Enterprises, which administrator Ian Grant said were owed more than $2 million in a combined claim.

Creditors then voted to appoint a committee of inspection, which would work with administrators through the insolvency process.

Creditors then had to nominate representatives for each group – teachers, parents, and other businesses.

Creditors were able to ask questions of the administrators, with many parents asking why security deposits they paid to the school for their children to start next year were not being included in their claim.

Administrators said the individual totals read out at the meeting were preliminary claims, and that they needed more time to go through the school’s bank account which included money from government funding, school fees and security deposits.

Mr Grant said creditors needed to show proof of their claim before administrators would add it to the total.

The meeting abruptly ended following the announcement of results from the vote to appoint a new administrator.