Kia ora e te whānau

Happy Valentine's Day! A very warm welcome back to Kaurilands School for 2025. I would especially like to welcome all our new families. We are excited to be part of the learning journey with your children and yourselves. Please come and see us if you need to share information, concerns or questions. We are all here to work together for the best outcomes for our children.

We are so lucky to have this glorious weather for the start of school and for our Year 6 camp. For those of you who are not aware, our Year 6 children have been at Finlay Park, Lake Karapiro this week from Tuesday until Friday. All reports indicate our children, teachers and parents are having an amazing time experiencing a fantastic range of activities including on the lake. We look forward to seeing many more photos in our next newsletter from this camp. Our Year 5 children will be going to Camp Adair, Hunua on March 3rd to 5th. Exciting adventures!

Our school year began with a pōwhiri to welcome all our new children and whānau. Many thanks to those of you who attended. We are privileged to work alongside our kaumatua, Warahi and Linda Paki, who have been part of our school for many years. They provide guidance, support and wisdom to us as we honour our commitment to Te Tiriti in all that we do. You will see Warahi and Linda at many events and they love to have a chat!

Safety on the road and carparks

I would like to take this opportunity to mention a couple of areas you can really help us with. As you are all aware, we are situated on a very busy road, made all the busier around drop off and pick up times. Every day we have all our Senior Leaders out at the pedestrian crossings on Atkinson Road and Kaurilands Road. Please use these crossings at all times. Unfortunately, a number of adults have been crossing the road directly from the dairy and in other places on the roads but not at the pedestrian crossings. Our children watch this behaviour and often try to copy it which is extremely dangerous.

Vision is also a very difficult issue for us on the crossings particularly if cars are parked on the yellow lines on either side. We will ask you to move if you are parked on the yellow lines. The area of road directly in front of the school is a P2 area. This is rarely the case in the afternoons with cars parked all along this strip. The P2 area is in force between 8.30am-9.00am and 2.45pm-3.15pm. This is designed to be an area parents can swing into to drop off or pick up children only - without leaving your vehicle. If you need or want to accompany your child inside, you need to park in the carpark or further up the road.

We are aware how difficult and slow it is to drive along Atkinson Road in particular during the peak times. When cars are parked along both sides of the road it becomes a very narrow space to navigate through for traffic in both directions. We encourage everyone to cross using the crossings rather than attempting to cross further up amongst the traffic. Please do not let your children out of the car on the road while you are waiting in traffic. Unfortunately, we have seen some examples of this recently. Please be patient.

Please do not park in the staff carpark at any time unless you are using one of the mobility carparks and have an arrangement with us. We only have 47 parks for 73 staff! Every day many people walk through the staff carpark, mostly to get to or from the Year 1 and 2 areas. Please instead walk through the gate beside the hall and use the pathway that runs alongside the carpark. This is a major safety risk for us.

Please help us with keeping all our children safe.

If your child rides a bike to school, it needs to be parked in the bike stands behind the senior block. Please don't park bikes in the scooter park area by the sandpit.

We look forward to seeing you all during the term.

Arohanui

Jo