School Newsletter

The Prime Minister has indicated that the alert levels will be reviewed on Sunday. It is our intention to maintain our current practice for now, and review/adapt plans as time/levels allows us to do so. Thank you so much for your ongoing support and flexibility with things like ensuring the children are not at school before 8.30am, and ensuring prompt pick ups are made at the end of the day (either 2.45 or 3pm as arranged with your child’s whānau teacher.)

We will continue to keep you up to date as to whether planned activities (sports, the arts etc) are going ahead or not. As soon as we know, we will pass it on to you. We are well aware that it is disappointing if things are postponed or cancelled after all the preparation has been done - 2020 is certainly a year where we have all needed to have resilience. It is something we actively teach the children too.

Alongside this, we’ve tried really hard to replace some of the cancelled things with other exciting things like our dance performance and the upcoming blockbuster movie!! 

We remain at Alert Level 2 for now. Thank you so much for your support and flexibility with things like ensuring the children are not at school before 8.30am, and prompt pickups at the end of the day (either 2.45 or 3pm as arranged with your child’s whānau teacher.) Please make sure you sign in at the office before entering any of the buildings for any reason.

We would also like to say a HUGE thank you for the effort that everyone is putting into remembering to advise us if your child is unable to attend school for any reason. Sometimes we can have as many as 50 absences in a day - imagine the nightmare for our office staff having to try to track down all those children?
We have noticed a big improvement with caregivers proactively contacting school - through the app, by phoning in or emailing the office and we are truly appreciative of this. Keep up the great work.

We will continue to keep you up to date as to whether planned activities (sports, the arts etc) are going ahead or not. As soon as we know, we will pass it on to you. 

We have been really impressed with everyone’s flexibility following the call to be back at Alert Level 2 of the Covid19 system. Even the tamariki in Mrs Hodge’s whānau class (Waka Iti) who have only been at school for a matter of days or weeks, have shown us that they can ‘kiss and go’, independently walk into their cloak bay, unpack their bag and get ready for the day - wow!! Ka rawe ra.

At this point in time we are at AL 2 until at least Thursday of next week, so keep up the great work everyone. IF we drop to AL 1 at that time, we welcome everyone into classrooms for whānau morning each Friday at 8.30am. 

While it is disappointing and difficult to have moved up in alert levels again this week, we are pretty much ‘business as usual’ here at school while we remain at AL2. Many of the changes that we needed to make post our first ‘lock- down’ period have stood us in good stead. We have already asked that the children do not arrive at school before 8.30am (unless booked into aPlus), we have maintained increased hygiene expectations, we now have an established routine for the children to independently enter and leave the classrooms, everyone is clear about not sending their child to school when unwell, and classroom programmes (by and large) are continuing as normal.

In the event that we are remaining at the current level next week, please re-read the notice sent home on Wednesday clarifying the expectations around AL 2 status.

If it does become necessary to move to AL 3, distance learning will be required again. This morning you received an email asking you to let us know if your child did not have access at home to a device to assist with their learning.
We wanted to update our records from the last time you were asked this question, as circumstances can change over time.

We have also asked you to let us know if your child is likely to need to attend school under AL3 conditions.
The Ministry of Education is keeping us updated on a daily basis and of course, we will keep you informed as soon as we know of any changes.