Friday 19 June was an incredibly sad and traumatic day for our community and New Zealand.

We will send our deepest condolences to Waitemata Police from our school community to acknowledge the tragic loss of one of their colleagues. As a school we monitored the situation as it unfolded and were in contact with the Ministry of Education and the NZ Police. We were not advised to put the school into lock down.  As the situation worsened we made the decision to keep the children in school until parents of the children living in the affected Massey area and surrounding streets were phoned to ensure alternative arrangements were made for these children.  All families in that area were contacted.  We would appreciate knowing if any children have been directly or indirectly connected to this incident.

Burglaries and Lock Down

In the last month the school has been burgled twice during the early hours of the morning.  Our cameras have worked extremely well in both situations and a group of two have been charged by police for one incident. The school was placed in lock down early on the morning of 12 June, when a male was apprehended on the school site.  All lock down procedures were followed, including the messaging out to parents. Parents are always advised the day before if the school is holding a lock down practice.

Community Surveys

Thank you to the parents who participated in the surveys. Your responses have helped us with our planning.

Community Survey Post Covid Lock Down (196 Responses)

• What has been positive about your child's learning at home?

• Seeing what they do in their learning. (73%)
  

• What was hard or difficult about having your child learning from home?

• Juggling priorities and not having enough time or energy to support their learning. (57%)
  

• 75% of parents contacted their child’s teacher during the lock down, and most were happy with the support.

• How could school have supported you and your child further with learning at home?

• Increased online interactions with peers. (41%)
  

At the School Gate: (184 responses)

Proposal: We have noticed (as have many other schools in New Zealand) that over the last three weeks, our students have developed great self-management skills and independence through our drop off and pick up procedures. Surprisingly, reduced anxiety has been evident with parents not dropping students directly into the learning spaces. Teachers are valuing the 1-1 connection time with their students from 8.30am.  We would like to continue these practices four days a week to maintain the growth we have seen.

Of the 184 responses, 71.2% of the respondents supported the above proposal for drop-off and pick up procedures.

Leave and Collect at the School Gate

For now, we would like to continue these practices four days a week and open the learning spaces on a Friday morning from 8.30am for parents to bring their children into school on one day a week.  Parents can use this time to look at their child’s learning, talk to the teacher and just generally enjoy being in the learning space with their child. We understand that some parents are unable to visit on a Friday morning and are also missing the social connection with other parents.  Please remember you can communicate by email with your child’s teacher to make another time to visit the learning space to discuss your child. We would love to have more parents attend our waiata ā kura on a Friday morning at 8.50am.  The whole school gathers together on the top court to sing together and parents can join us.

Year 1, 2.30pm finish time will stop at the end of Term 2 and all students will finish at 3.00pm in Term 3.

Thank you everyone for your support with this change to the children entering and leaving school. We are very appreciative of your co-operation and willingness to listen to what we are noticing.

Learning Areas H14-17 are nearly ready for us to move into…….

At last our learning spaces, which have been modernised, are finished. The final adjustments are being made and H10B, H10P, H7 and H8 will move in hopefully on the last Friday of Term 2, so we are all ready to begin the new term. You will know this building project has been fraught with many obstacles so we are all feeling extremely appreciative that we are finally reaching a finished product!!

Photos of Block 6

Block 6 - H11, has also been moved onto the site.  This building was built off site and moved in sections on Monday 22 June. Work will continue on this building over the next term. Watch the Facebook page and SchoolApp for updates!!

Water and Sand Area Development 

We plan to develop the outside environment in front of Block 6 - H11, into a natural environment with sand, water, rocks and native plants. We are desperate for a landscape designer in our community to donate their services to help us with this design. This work will be a school community project and we would love people who are able to help us with the actual work to put their names forward to Rae in the office.

Anne Leitch

PRINCIPAL