Kia ora parents, caregivers and whānau

We certainly live in uncertain times. Many of us have probably just started settling into the routine of our lockdown Level 4 bubbles and are now trying to interpret what Level 3 guidelines mean in all our varied contexts. Level 3 is clearly still very restricted and not anywhere near normal but enables some aspects of our economy to activate and the government to cautiously assess to what extent COVID 19 has been eliminated.

Apart from what you have also heard in the media, principals have not yet received more detailed guidelines regarding schools being open for years 1 to 10. We are expecting these shortly and we need to wait to hear the Prime Minister’s announcement on Monday regarding whether we exit Level 4 on Wednesday. Advice from the government for Level 3 is still that where possible people stay working from home and school students remain at home. Where that is not possible school will be open in our case for our year 9 and 10 students. That will create a number of planning issues around how we deploy our staff, as some year 9 and 10 students will be on site and that may differ day to day, while a majority of year 9 and 10 students and all year 11 to 13 students will continue online learning from home.

In reality as planning courses for online learning is already a full time load, all students will probably continue learning via the online delivery with year 9 and 10 students on site at school being supervised by some staff. The caveat to these comments is that we do not have Ministry of Education guidelines yet and the senior leadership team and Board of Trustees are meeting on Monday and Tuesday after the Prime Minister’s announcement on Monday to plan Level 3 return to school.

You can be assured that before return to school in any form our cleaning contractors are already prepared for a full clean with extra sanitising of the school. We are well stocked with cleaning products and PPE for sick bay use. Our planning will include consideration of social distancing factors and temporary reconfiguration of the sick bay to achieve more isolation both for students and administration staff.

I will keep you updated as soon as we know more.

We also know there will be families out there who are really struggling for a number of reasons. Please email the relevant dean if there are factors you feel we should know in relation to supporting our students.

• Year 9 Mr Simon Kersten krs@cghs.school.nz
• Year 10 Miss Holly Caird cah@cghs.school.nz
• Year 11 Mrs Charlotte Phoon phc@cghs.school.nz
• Year 12 Mrs Sarah Burrell brs@cghs.school,nz
• Year 13 Miss Charlotte O’Rourke orc@cghs.school.nz

We want to congratulate families and students on the high engagement in online learning to date – over 90 percent at all year levels. We have very good information collection systems around who is and who is not connecting and around how students are feeling about their management of learning online and their own health and welfare. We will continue to do supportive follow up contact with students and parents where we do not see the student connecting.

You might be interested to know that the three most common positive factors students report back around lockdown in the recent short wellbeing survey are

• Connection and spending time with family
• Increased fitness
• Better sleep

Baking rates highly too! This feedback is a lovely affirmation of your role as parents. We are clearly in the long haul for the fight against COVID 19 so it is important we all try to maintain our strengthened family connections as we work through the various alert levels.

Ngā mihi nui

Christine O’Neill