Amesbury Digest - 14th November

Tēnā koutou,

It is starting to feel as though we are coming together in different ways a little more as a school community. It was lovely to meet up with some of our school whānau earlier this week to talk about health, wellbeing, and a range of other aspects that were important to people. We have seen a wide range of families stopping by at the book fair in our school reception area over the past few days, and we held our first ever Churton Park Poetry Competition sharing event on Friday. It is so nice to be re-connecting slowly as a community, and we hope to keep building on this over the next few months.

On Friday this week we have our community get together from 5-7pm on the school field, if the weather permits. Come along with your whānau for a chance to relax, hang out and reconnect with other families. There will be a bouncy castle and a range of sports equipment available. Bring a family picnic or Friday take away, and School will provide people with a Mr Whippy ice cream cone to go with it. CJ's Hangi will be available for pre-order - see here for more details. Keep your fingers crossed for nice weather; it is an outside event, so we will need to postpone if things look a bit dicey.

Paid union meetings for teachers

Over the next couple of weeks there will be paid union meetings for teachers in the run up to negotiations for the new collective agreement (contract). All teachers who are union members must attend, and all meetings are held within school hours.

Amesbury School teachers will all be attending their meeting on Thursday afternoon this week (17th Nov). There will be a group of  school leaders and our non-union teachers at school on Thursday afternoon, so school will remain open for all tamariki. Normal learning programmes will not be running for the afternoon due to the smaller number of teachers and leaders at school; other activities and sports will be happening on this afternoon instead. If families choose to pick their children up early on this day, we understand this and that will be fine. 

We will keep our community up to date about the outcome of the union meetings and the progress of negotiations for the teachers’ collective agreement.

Ngā mihi nui, 

Urs Cunningham