Kia ora Koutou

As we finish the school year it is my pleasure to look back on all the work we have completed as we move towards becoming one new Centre for Deaf Education. With all the changes, our Principals and staff have worked really hard this year to ensure that our students remain our priority. I commend their energy and dedication. I thank you too for supporting us through this time. We know you are as excited about the changes as we are.

There are several exciting developments to tell you about. Firstly, we have employed a fantastic design company called Plato Creative to help us choose a new name and design a new website and logo for our new organisation.

We have worked hard to ensure that parents, students, staff, wider community, Maori and Deaf are all represented in this process and have formed a reference group to guide our work. We hope to reveal the new name, logo and website around March next year.

Other exciting news relates to extra funding we have received from the Ministry of Education for three new NZSL hubs throughout the country to add to the range of programmes and activities currently available. The Wellington area has been selected as the first of three areas to benefit from the additional investment with two further areas selected in the following 18 months.

For further information about these and our other service improvements, check out the parent section of our website.

Finally, our DEC Facebook is running a weekly NZSL news bulletin for students which is a truly fantastic resource. I encourage you to check out the latest one. This is just a trial so we would love to hear your feedback.

https://www.facebook.com/deafeducationcentres

In this newsletter you will get a snapshot of the many and varied activities our students have enjoyed this term and we will shortly issue our 2019 Journal. I hope you enjoy the many good news stories we are sharing. This year has brought many joyful occasions but also sad ones too as we have farewelled several much-loved staff. Our thoughts go out to their whānau and friends.

May I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and fabulous holiday break. See you back here in 2020!

nga mihi nui,

Denise Powell

Chair of the Combined Board of Trustees