Kia ora whānau,

We are starting to settle into the renovated classrooms and it feels good to have every class back to where they should be. 

The New Entrants are delighted to have the big windows where they are taking full advantage of seeing what is going on and reporting everything they see to their teachers. They are asking questions like “where’s that class going?', "why are they outside?".  Then, at the end of the day wondering why there are so many parents outside.  We realised that they have been in the hall where they have no vantage points for keeping up to date with the comings and goings of a busy school. It is cute 😍

Today is the first day of Hagley Winter Sport. We wish all our teams the very best as they compete against other schools in Canterbury. It is always a great privilege for our Year 5 students to get the sports jacket, travel in the bus and do the sports chants. Ideally, we would like to send all of our children, however, we have restrictions placed on us on the number of teams we can take. Such a great day for the first round. 🌞

I would like to remind whānau to sign up for the Parent Maths Evening on Thursday 1 June, 7pm, and also to complete the camp survey. Your views are important and we like to get representation from as many of our community as we can.

NZEI, the teachers union, is currently in negotiations with the Government regarding terms and conditions on the Collective Agreement. This is expected to come to an end on Sunday evening. A fly in the ointment, for us and for you, is if there is not a positive outcome, then the planned strike on Wednesday 31 May and the work ban will go ahead. This will mean that the school would not be open on 31 May and we would need to postpone our Maths Evening. We do feel optimistic that an agreement will be reached and that everything can go ahead as planned. Should the Primary Teacher strike on Wednesday 31 May go ahead, strike notices are required under law to go out on Sunday morning (28 May). Fingers crossed there is a positive outcome. We are not a staff that feels comfortable inconveniencing our wonderful parent community, and none of us want to lose a day's pay, however, we also know that the tamariki we teach, need much more support than they are currently getting. Times have changed, life is more difficult and the funding model needs to change for schools to meet these challenges.

Our first full school assembly in the hall will take place on Thursday at 9am. We can’t wait! See you there.

Have a happy weekend,

Lee   😀