November 2018 edition
Welcome to the November 2018 edition of BOARDTalk.
So little time … so much to do. The end of term is about five weeks away, the builders are nearly gone, Years 7 and 8 are back from camp in Nelson... but the most anticipated highlight of the month is that the sun is beginning to show its face more often - and the kids love it!
November meeting highlights:
Co-opted Board Member: The Board would like to welcome Megan Hurley who was co-opted on at the November meeting. Megan has board experience and will be taking over the Home and School portfolio.
Property Update: Our pathway and ramp project should be mostly completed over the next week. The final part of the project we will have to wait on are the handrails, these will be installed in the first week of December. The new pathway in front of Room 1, 2 and 3 looks fantastic. It is keeping those large puddles at bay and is also being well used by scooters. This week we have also had our property manager out to look at the drainage work that needs to be done around the base of the large tree outside the library. The roots of this tree have caused significant issues. The Hard Surfaces project will dovetail onto this project.
Farewells: We were sad to see both Jackie Sutherland and Caroline Wardle leave us at the end of last term. They have been a great asset to the school over a number of years, both have an infectious passion for teaching and we are sure the children they have taught across the school will hold fond memories of these two with them for a long time. We are also sad to share that at we have accepted the resignation of Daryl Collingwood. Daryl has been a member of the staff for the last 12 years and is going to be missed at school and in the wider community. Daryl and his wife are moving to take up new roles. We wish them well on their respective journeys to other schools.
Attendance: We received a report from the Ministry of Education around our attendance data for Term 2 of this year. We were very pleased to see Maungaraki School significantly outperforming the average for all Wellington area schools across all year groups. Further we outperformed the overall average for all decile 10 schools. What we took from this report is that Maungaraki School is one of the best attended schools in the country. This is a testament to our school culture and value placed on engaging education.
The average attendance across all year groups for the country was 66.8% with Maungaraki School at 79.3%. Of particular note was our year 7 and 8 age groups with 90% and 83.3% regularly attending school.
Next meeting and BoT information
Our next Board of Trustees meeting will be held on 28 November at 6.00pm in the school staff room. Remember that a full copy of monthly BoT meeting minutes are available on the school website or by request from the school office.
If you would like to raise a matter with the BoT or to attend a meeting please see the school website or contact us for details.