Kia ora Parents / Caregivers / Whanau
After 7 weeks of COVID-19 restrictions, lockdown, school closure and then partial opening ......... we reopen for all students next Monday 18th May and I must admit, I am a tad excited about it. Earlier this week, I sent out a message to parents and caregivers outlining how school will function under Alert Level 2 restrictions and I hope you took some time to read and digest the information.
The success of our reopening relies on our ability to partner together for the good of everyone. While, for the most part, school will operate as normal for our students, we have had to think very carefully about the kinds of actions we must take to keep us all safe and well.
Visitor Registers (contact tracing)
Contact tracing continues to be an incredibly important part of New Zealand’s response to COVID-19. Recording who comes on-site means we can work with health authorities to identify who had been in close contact with that person, if there was a confirmed or probable case of COVID-19 in our school community.
To minimise contact, our first request is to ask that parents drop off or pick up children at the gate and do not enter our school grounds unless absolutely necessary. Depending on the age or needs of children, some parents and caregivers will need to come on-site to drop off or pick up your child. If you do need to enter our school grounds, at any time of day, you must sign in - no exceptions.
To help with this, we will have a couple of options available to you:
- Smartphone App - bring your phone with you and use our smartphone app "COVID-19 Check-in" feature. Simply navigate to the page on our app, complete the details and click "sign-in" or "sign out" as you enter and leave. This method is contactless and will only take a moment, as such this is our preferred option.
- We will have staff at each entrance into the school who will have a device and can manually check you in via the app if you do not have your phone with you.
- Paper Registers - available at entry points to the school grounds as well.
- There will be hand sanitiser available at each sign-in table for you to use.
- Vistab in the office (for visitors)
Please understand that this is an important health and safety measure that all schools must implement. Your co-operation with this is very much appreciated.
It's going to be wonderful to have our school community back together after so long. The playgrounds will be back open and it will be great to see the children again.
Finally - just in case you were wondering, the Teacher Only Day we had originally planned for Friday 29th May has been canceled. We have all had enough disruption recently and another day of school closure is not appropriate at this time.
Enjoy the rest of your week and have a lovely weekend.
Ngā mihi nui
Rob Rush
Principal / Tumuaki