Amesbury Digest - 25th May 2020

Kia ora koutou,

It has been fabulous having the students back onsite at school, and having our school begin to feel more ‘normal’ again. We didn’t think we would miss loud voices, trails of shoes, and chippie crumbs quite so much! 

There have been lots of exciting things happening in all teams this week, from training for Whānau Olympics in Pōhutukawa, to planning our fitness trail, creating art about life in our bubbles and learning about Newton’s laws of motion. The return to school has been a smooth one, and we are all settling back in well.

We have been so impressed with the calm and positive way children have returned, and we are aware that much of this is due to the hard work and support from our parents and whānau, getting your children ready to come back to school. Thank you all for all of the work that went into your children’s learning during our rāhui; we know you all carried a heavy load trying to manage family life whilst also managing working and learning from home. We hope you are all finding things a little more manageable now.

It is very heartening to note the positive trend of cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, with very few cases in the last couple of weeks. In the Wellington region there have been no new cases of Covid for more than a month, assuring us that schools are safe for our students. Nevertheless, we are remaining cautious and careful about hygiene habits at school, with frequent hand washing and/or sanitising throughout the day, and consistent reminders about safe coughing and sneezing habits. The new drop off and pick up routines are going well, and I know that teachers and leaders are all enjoying greeting students each morning as they come onto school grounds. Let's hope we keep enjoying this when the Wellington wind and rain start up! We are due for rain in the coming week - please check that your child comes to school with a coat, and it may pay to hunt out your umbrella!

With that in mind, I would like to make a plea for everyone to work together to help keep the roads around our school safe for our children. We can do this by ensuring that anyone who is picking up our children is driving slowly, parking in safe, legal places, and bearing in mind that the safety of all children is our top priority. Parking, or even pausing for a minute to drop off or pick up, on yellow lines or across driveways is both illegal and extremely dangerous. Many of our children are still young and small, and struggle to see across cars that block their sightlines. This will be particularly important during inclement weather, as this can cause people to rush and sometimes make poor decisions about safety. I would also like to remind all adults to please use the zebra crossing across Amesbury Drive. A fully grown adult may be able to see over the tops of cars to view the road clearly; however, children can’t, and we had had a number of incidents where children are dashing quickly across the road because it is the quickest route, despite having no real knowledge of whether a car is coming or not. Children follow what they see adults doing, so please model using the crossing. Thanks to you all for helping to keep our community safe.

We have made a few adjustments to events planned for this term, to allow children time to settle back in, and to ensure a safe start in alert level 2. Below are some dates to note (all of these events are in our school calendar). To help with the school lingo, in terms of term weeks, we are just beginning Week 7. Many inter school competitions and events have been postponed until later in the year, with several still to be confirmed. Our school photos were originally planned for the last week of this term, but we have pushed this date out a little, to the first week of term 3 (Tuesday 21st July), to give us enough time for everyone to be fully settled back into school routines. It will also ensure we all have enough time to get to the hairdressers!

Our school cross country, which was originally scheduled for early this term, will now be held in the last week of this term. We will wait until a little closer to the time to confirm whether it can be a spectator event, opening the grounds up to our parents and whānau. We are hoping that by the end of term, we will be able to host whānau back onsite with us. Our Junior Invitational Cross Country, which usually sees our Year 1-3 team host 10 other local schools for a fabulous junior cross country competition, has been postponed. Hopefully we will look to run it later in the year.

Dates coming up:

• Week 7 May 27th Wed / 29th Fri - Co-curricular lessons starting

• Week 7 May 26th and 27th - Connection Conferences

• Week 8 June 1st Queen’s Birthday - public holiday (school closed)

• Week 12 June 30th - School Cross Country

• Week 12 July 3rd - last day of term 2

All in all, a very settled and positive start back at school, and we are looking forward to the rest of this very unique term!

Ngā mihi nui,

John Bunting (BoT Chairperson) and Urs Cunningham (Acting Principal)