Thank you for your support with the visits to Te Rangimarie Marae this week. The children participated with enthusiasm and learnt loads about marae protocol.
Special thanks to those who assisted with the karanga, speaking at the powhiri and supporting groups of tamariki each day.

Talofa lava, o le vaiaso lenei o lai o aoao ma fiafia le gagana samoa

PLEASE remember that school will be closed tomorrow (31st May) for a Teacher Only Day. Staff will be completing professional learning.

We also thank the many of you who remain supportive of us, despite the disruption caused by
on-going industrial actions. Ensuring that we have enough high quality teachers to support our tamariki into the future is incredibly important to us.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank our incredibly talented and hard-working staff. There are very few days in the year that our teachers do not work through their morning tea or lunch break, or get to eat their lunch in peace – mostly they eat while on duty or while supervising the children eating, or while supporting a lunch time activity or club. After school we have both teaching and support staff supporting sports teams with practices, refereeing games or providing sideline support. Teachers have meetings after school most days of the week (working in collaborations means constant discussions and monitoring of child successes and challenges), they make themselves available for parent education sessions/discussion or professional learning (out of regular working hours). Evenings and weekends are often taken up with lesson preparation, resource making, planning, marking, maintaining a personal portfolio of evidence, responding to correspondence, fulfilling specific additional responsibilities etc.

PLEASE remember that school will be closed on both next Wednesday the 29th May, AND next Friday the 31st May. We are genuinely regretful about the necessity to close on Wednesday for strike action. It is definitely not a decision made lightly by anyone.

As previously advised, staff will be undertaking first aid training and wellbeing professional learning for Teacher Only day on Friday.

We held our final meeting for the 2016 – 2019 Board of Trustees earlier this week.
At this meeting we recognised the many achievements of the trustees who have worked tirelessly in their governance role over their period of time on the board.
I would like to offer my sincere thanks to each and every one of you:
Brett Calkin who has served on our board for 9 years, the last 6 years skilfully completing the chairperson role and managing personnel.
Tim Foss and Philip Steer have each served for 6 years. Tim has been the deputy chairperson and his specific portfolio has been efficiently managing the finances. Philip held the projects and community role successfully before moving into policy. Mike Campbell and Andrew Hill have served for almost 3 years – effectively managing the project management and property portfolios. Rachel Buckley was co- opted onto the board just 12 months ago – her speciality portfolios have been grant applications and community matters. Carlee Hodge has been the elected staff representative and Amanda Redley the minute secretary.
Helen Griffin and Reece Hawkins also attend board meetings to offer support and advice to the board.

What a highly talented group of people – I am honoured to have worked alongside you. Among their many achievements, the school is financially secure and this has allowed the board to contribute significantly to the Ministry of Education allocations when we have completed property upgrades. There is no way our physical learning environments could be so appealing without this injection of funds.