Term 1 | Week 7

**REMINDER - If you are interested in pre-ordering a copy of our 2021 Yearbook, please complete the Google Form by 12 pm tomorrow (18th March). We need to reach our minimum order number of 35 if pre-orders are to be printed.**

Kia ora e te whānau,

We’re looking forward to our non-uniform day fundraiser tomorrow, organised by our Student Board of Trustees Representative, Monique van der Westhuizen. The theme is blue and yellow - from the Ukrainian flag - we are raising money for a Ukrainian Support Charity. Gold coin donations will be collected by our newly elected House Captains. Congratulations to the students who are taking on these leadership roles:

Ōhau - Monique van der Westhuizen (Year 12) and Joshua Murray (Year 11)
Ruataniwha - Daniel Thompson (Year 12) and Finn McKinley (Year 11)
Pūkaki - Lily Brophy (Year 13) and Ella Ferguson (Year 11)

Thank you to all the families supporting our Teacher Only Day by affording us the time to provide this essential training to staff. At the time this newsletter is sent, I will be working with the team at school and our Kāhui Ako facilitators from Core Education to make decisions over how we apply our new learning to our classroom curricula. NPDL (New Pedagogies for Deeper Learning) is an exciting community to work with, in our educational roles. I hope our further engagement will deepen the learning opportunities offered (as promised in the title)!

You’ll know from our communications that we have been made aware of two covid-19 cases in our school community. One in our teaching staff, and the other in our student body. Please be reassured that we will continue to keep you informed as cases are reported to us. At present, no close contacts within the school have been identified as neither case had attended school in the days prior to testing positive.

We continue to operate in a fairly normal way at school as defined by Stage 1 of our plan.

If your child were to test positive for covid-19, please let us know as soon as possible. We are required to report cases to the Ministry of Education, inform the community of any cases and confirm expectations for close contacts. This can only be achieved if cases are reported to us by our families. You can let us know if your child has tested positive by calling the school during school hours (03 435 0650), or by emailing [email protected] out of hours.

Thank you again to the parents keeping their children at home if they are sick, it does help us to remain operational. At present, teachers are updating their learning packs for any situation that may arise where we have to divert individual classes or larger groups to home learning. These packs can also be used if your child needs to isolate at home - just let us know and we can send them through.

He waka eke noa,

Kate Staniford
Tumuaki | Principal