Parent Council News
Christchurch Marathon Drinks Station 4 June
Rugby Night Social 24 June
Ethel and Bethel Bingo Night 12 August
School Disco Date TBC
The Parent Council is feeling refreshed and enthused with a big change in membership this year. We are grateful to our existing members for their ongoing knowledge, as well as our new members for their fresh ideas. We would love to see even more new members join and some more dads would be great to keep our 3 men company! We are currently looking at changing our name as many of us feel that the name ‘Parent Council’ does sound intimidating and a lot more formal than we actually are, so watch this space!
Our new members have questioned what the Parent Council does and why we constantly have to fundraise. So a brief outline:
Pastoral care – we provide a discretionary fund to the school to help those families in real financial need with financial assistance with the cost of their children attending activities; we also provide meals/baking when a family is going through a tough time, and provide help for families in various other ways as needed. We also have a team of people who pop meals into the school freezers so that they are readily available if the office ladies know of someone they might help. This is all managed confidentially though the office so if you ever know of a family who needs some TLC please let Catherine or Claire know and they simply pass on to us what is needed, we don’t need to know who or why.
Social – we organise social activities throughout the year to help families get to know one another and to build on the CTK spirit. We also fund and help with organising the Year 8 leavers dinner which is a really special night for our leavers and their parents. We also pay for and organise lunch, be it sausage sizzle or burgers, on the CTK feast day in November.
Fundraising – yes, unfortunately this is part of school life!
Schools receive a bulk grant to cover its day to day costs. Unfortunately it is always a juggle for schools to meet all of their costs through this budget as this includes all maintenance (eg. Replacing heat pumps as they wear out, re-roofing classrooms where they are leaking) and so the only way that ‘extras’ can be afforded is through fundraising. These extras are also often actually necessities in today’s technology reliant world eg library computer, classroom whiteboards.
We know that last year was a Fair year and so our families were asked to contribute a lot, both in terms of donations and time - this year we have lots of activities planned that only require a few hours’ time and no money from you so please support these!
Our next meeting is Monday 10th April at 7.30 in the staff room. We would love to see you there.