Tena koutou katoa. It has been another lovely week having the children back at school. While we would really love to have them all back at once, we know that having the lower numbers is the good way to mitigate risk. I know a few of you have been wondering if school will return to full-time before the end of the year and we received the answer to that question from the Ministry this week, no it won’t. The part-time nature of school will be in place for the remainder of this school year.

I hope you have all booked in your zoom meeting time with your child’s teacher? These are being held next Friday, 3 December. Bookings need to be made through the Skoolloop app before Thursday, with a confirmation email coming back to you. Teachers will then email you the zoom link.

Many of you are also asking about buying the school pool key for the summer season. At this stage we are waiting on information on when school pools can open to the public and as soon as we have this we will notify everyone. We do envisage being able to give out keys before school ends, and will look to extend the time into Term 2 next year.

For those not returning to school this year, the classroom teachers are putting your child’s personal belongings in a paper bag and will let you know when these can be collected from the office. We are waiting for the year books to arrive first, as those who have paid the activity contribution will receive one of these. Those in Year 4-6 who paid for the production t-shirts, will get these too.

We have some staff leaving at the end of this school year. While it is always sad to see good staff go, we know that there are many reasons for this. For ours, some are relocating out of Auckland while others are changing careers. Our teachers, Miss Grace Osborne, Mrs Jessica Vader, Miss Harriet Macpherson and Miss Imogen Williams, are leaving as well as Mrs Grace Tang who is one of our valuable learning assistants. Mrs Charlotte Barrance also won’t be at school next year as she is taking a year’s leave. We do wish them all well in their moves and sincerely thank them for their passion and enthusiasm as part of our Milford School community.

This does give opportunity to others and we have 3 new staff members we will be welcoming in the new year - two into Year 4 and one into Year 6. Miss Danielle Nicholson (currently in Year 6) will be the new Team Leader of Year 4.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Ngā mihi nui

Sue