Kia ora koutou katoa

 The tone was set so beautifully with the mihi whakatau led by Joe Mason and Kylie Bellis from Grey High. Thank you for awhi-ing our Catholic community and setting the tone for a fun weekend! It was made all the sweeter with our debating team (Samantha Donaldson, Libby Boddy, and Jack Byrne) beating all other teams to win the ultra-competitive debating competition. We could not be prouder of you all! Mr Mulcahy has done the maths and said that we came first on a school size calculation – Go JPII students for punching well above your weight! We were represented in the other competitions by our talented students who absolutely held their own. While we all came together in competition, we were there in the spirit of friendship, and it was great to see bonds being formed and students reconnecting with each other after a two year hiatus. Once again, we owe a debt of gratitude to Madeleine Castle for organizing the event, to Leah Smith, Jason Briggs, and Liz Manning for their admin support. We couldn’t have done it without you! To Jennie McMillan (debate coach extraordinaire), and Adam Baker, thank you for all the time and effort you put into making this such a successful event for our students.

This week we have seen a significant surge in covid cases, impacting staff and students. I would like to acknowledge the work Deputy Principal, Dan Steggles, has done in managing relief for teachers, and for our students who have been so flexible in joining other classes to make it work. 

Please be vigilant and if your son/daughter is showing any symptoms or is feeling unwell, please keep them away from school. We will continue with our commonsense approach by providing masks for students and staff that would prefer to wear them and keeping our rooms ventilated. For more information, please see https://covid19.govt.nz/, and we really do thank everyone for supporting us to keep our students, staff, and community safe.
For those students away, but well enough to continue their work, can I encourage them to use their subject teams, and if unsure contact their subject teacher.

Today the students that were in school were treated by a performance from the Ugly Shakespeare company. Their interpretation of a midsummer's night's dream featured an impromptu performance by our very own Ciaran Throw! Thanks to Ms Johns for organizing this.

Next week we have senior cricket at Buller High School and Y13 Biology students out to Orana Park.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and manages to avoid catching anything (unless fishing!)

 We will communicate early next week if we need to roster year groups home or make timetable changes to ensure we have enough staff on board to safely open the school. At this stage we are fine.

Keep safe this weekend.

Ngā mihi nui

Renée Hutchinson

Principal