February Meeting

At the last Board meeting on 11th Feb:

We approved the 3 year Strategic Plan. This was created based on feedback from the school community, as well as input from students, staff and the board.

We reviewed the 2021 Annual Plan which links directly into the strategic plan and is broken down into the 3 goals – Teaching & Learning, Well being, and Creativity. This is available for all staff to reference on the wall in the new staff workspace.

We approved the 2021 budget.

There was no student achievement data this early in the year, however reporting on the 3 goals will be given at each board meeting (one goal each meeting). Teaching & Learning and Priority Learners are covered in the Annual Plan.

Professional Development for Term 1 includes all teachers attending workshops for Structured Literacy and for Prime Maths (a new maths programme being trialed for Yr 5 and up). Mr. Wilcox has signed up for a NZ histories trial, and as part of this will be teaching the Yr 8s the programme. This will become part of the curriculum under the new Education Act in 2022.

Our School Review is based on EROs 3 targets for the year – collecting, analysing and reporting on school wide achievement; Internal Evaluation (i.e. how well our programmes and practices are working); and Curriculum development.

Property improvements include external and internal painting of the Hall and Room 15 as part of Ministry requirements for cyclical maintenance. Next will be the new soft fall matting in the junior playground – due for install in the next school holidays. The Pool was well managed over the summer holidays – the solar heating circuit pump had failed but has now been repaired. There have been no issues with water quality since the filtration unit was replaced.

We agreed to increase the hall hire and bond cost, and clarify expectations of the hire in line with other similar schools agreements. This was due to costs of cleaning, damages and electricity not being covered by the current nominal fee. MASH is no longer being run out of Highfield due to lack of space with Rm 15 being no longer available.

We discussed quotes for new school signage and will apply to pub charities to help with this cost.

In Staffing - We have had no new Staff members so far this year. Kerryn will be teaching Te Reo to all classes for 1 hr per week each. Our URF (Urgent Response Fund) has been renewed which means we can continue our wellbeing project which is a group run by Nic Daly to support children. This has been very successful so far.

We discussed the new timetable which seemed to be working well so far, and a review will be carried out later in the term.

We approved term dates and Teacher Only Days for 2021, as well as a full no-teaching day for goal setting interviews to encourage all parents to attend. School Reports will be in the format of 1 parent / student conference + 1 written report, which is the same as last year.

Our next Board meeting is Thursday 4th March.