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Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou

Welcome to Term 3

Staffing

I didn't get the opportunity to tell our community that Ciaran Tagney has left us to teach in Australia before he eventually heads back to the UK. We wish him all the best! Kate Cronin is taking over the Year 11 Deans position. Kate and Ciaran did a really good handover at the end of Term 2 to make it as seamless as possible.

We also like to thank Sandra Hyslop who did a great job of relieving for a few weeks before she left to go overseas; we are hoping to see her again once she returns!

We welcome back Tealy Lynch after her parental leave, and look forward to working with her again!

We also welcome our new members of teaching staff who at the time of writing this should all be ready to start on the first day of Term 3. To get our overseas teachers here is a long process which is very expensive and incredibly time consuming. Our support staff have worked incredibly hard with me behind the scenes and I really appreciate this. However, this hard work is definitely worth it as all of our new teachers are great and will be an asset to our school and the wider community.

• McDonald Mugonapanja joining Science from South Africa

• Raja Selvasegaran who is from Singapore and also joining the Science department

• Lehanri Kirton who is joining Technology as a Digital Technology teacher from South Africa.

• Donna Ellis is joining us as our Learning Support Coordinator

The Ball - 22nd July

Everyone is looking forward to the Ball and it will be a great night as always. A special thanks to the Ball committee and Susan Smith for putting this all together. Also thanks to the PPTA who always support us to create a fantastic night!

Ka Ora / Ka Ako

We surveyed both the students and staff about Ka Ora Ka Ako, our healthy lunch programme. In total 363 students completed the survey and around 80% said that overall they were enjoying the school lunches. This was really great to read. There was lots of appreciation for the food and the feedback about our lunch people was incredibly positive. Kim and her team are doing an excellent job and we are very happy with how it has started. Both staff and students gave us some feedback about what we needed to work on and gave us some practical ideas to look into.

We are looking forward to continuing to work with the team for the second half of the year.

Engagement and Attendance

We are continuing to work on our Engagement and Attendance strategy. We understand it has been a difficult first half of the year in terms of students being rostered home etc, but hopefully there will be less disruption from now on. If you need any support from us at school with regards to attendance please call or email the office and we will make sure that we find the right person to work with you and your child.

As always, if you have any questions or queries please contact me.

I hope you've had an enjoyable holiday break, we look forward to seeing you back here in Term 2.

Samantha Mortimer

Principal Greymouth High School

Tumuaki Kura tuarua o Māwhera