Kia ora koutou
With yesterday’s announcement by the Government, we are implementing with urgency our plan to support your child’s learning from home. We appreciate this is a sudden and significant change, and will be heavily disruptive to many people in our community.
For children of essential workers, we look forward to seeing your child here at school today and Wednesday . You may wish to check if you are considered an essential worker - https://covid19.govt.nz/government-actions/covid-19-alert-system/ however those roles include doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and police. We continue to ask that children who are not well, do not attend school.
For all other children, we will be supporting their learning from your home in the following ways:
- through online learning
- provision of a learning pack for the remainder of the week
If you have not received an email from one of your child’s teachers by tomorrow, please email their whānau teacher (addresses on the school website) yourself, as we may not have your correct address.
If you need to have your child cared for by someone else you will need to identify that person or people as part of your self-isolated group. This will need to be done by midnight Wednesday and the group must remain the same for the whole 4 week period. The caregiver’s own group (eg, their partner and children), your child and your own group (eg, your parents and other children) become one group. This group needs to be limited to minimise any risk of spread and should be no more than 20 people.
Your child will be looking to you for guidance about this decision. Parents, caregivers, whānau and teachers will have a particularly important part to play in reassuring children at this time. If you haven’t already done so, you may wish to read the information put together by the Ministry of Education to support your conversations with your children – Talking to children about COVID-19
School holidays brought forward
School holidays are being brought forward so that they are completed within the 4 week period. Holidays will now begin from Monday 30 March to Tuesday 14 April inclusive (a reminder that the Tuesday after Easter Monday is always a closed day for schools).
We would strongly recommend that you do ensure that for the two weeks of school holidays, that you and your children have a complete break from formal learning. The children don’t usually have a ‘home learning pack’ in the holidays, and these holidays are no exception to that.
At the end of the school holidays, schools will be open for distance learning but not physically open for staff to work at the schools.
Please follow the link below and complete the survey so we get an idea of students access to online learning. https://forms.gle/DUEWAE6YGoWEKKnYA
Teachers will not be available to respond to learning over the ‘school holiday’ period but will provide new learning updates and responses from the 15th April. They will be responding between the hours of 8am and 4pm Monday to Friday.
Please note the instruction to stay home (Alert Level 4) will continue beyond the new school holiday period but schools will be technically open for distance instruction. Teachers will be working offsite.
As noted by the Prime Minister these restrictions are our best chance to slow the virus in New Zealand and to save lives. We all have a clear role here to slow the spread of COVID-19.
He waka eke noa - we are all in this together! Stay safe.
Kia kaha
Nga mihi
Lin Dixon Tim Foss
Principal Chairperson of the Board of Trustees