As you are aware, things are changing very quickly in terms of the Omicron surge and we need to be adapting to meet this.

We are now in Phase Three of the government’s management plan and we wanted to share with you our school response plan - bearing in mind that changes are happening quite quickly, we have adapted this for the current circumstances.

Just as the government has three phases, we consider that there will likely be 3 phases to our response to Omicron.

Tahi: This is where we are at the moment. The school can function and we can manage to staff at our usual levels while any students or staff needing to self isolate can do so from home and we can manage to continue to operate fully.

Rua: This will occur when we may have more staff absences but are still able to operate the school safely but with some adjustments. This might mean supervising classes differently and rostering home some year levels.

Toru: would occur when we were not able to remain open to all students and would go to online learning. At this stage, we would be considered an essential service and some senior staff would be required to remain onsite to supervise the children of essential workers. We would be eligible for the Rapid Antigen Testing process to enable a skeleton staff to remain onsite and we would be asking parents if they required their daughter to come to school if she is too young to be at home unsupervised and they are a critical worker themselves.

We will communicate with our parents and wider community to ensure everyone is aware of what phase we are at. In the meantime, we continue to follow all public health advice regarding protecting ourselves. We are learning how very important the masks are in this process. If a mask is worn by an affected person the chances of them spreading the virus are much lower and we are no longer considered close contacts of an affected person if everyone is masked up and not engaged in activities where secretions can be shared.

While we respect that some people have mask exemptions, by wearing masks, we mitigate the risk of being a Close Contact and this enables the school to operate and remain open longer.

Our policy regarding facemasks continues to be:

1. To see the student's Proof of letter of exemption. (We don’t challenge or ask why - simply request to see that they have evidence of exemption)

2. The Exemption Sticker to be attached by lanyard or in their pocket

3. Noted on our system so that teachers do not keep asking the student about the exemption

You will be aware that the Ministry of Education has loosened the rules regarding extra curricular sport.They have made the decision in principle to lift the vaccine mandate from school sport and kapa haka. We are awaiting more details on this. While it is great that our young people can be engaged in healthy outdoor activities involving sport, we will still be adopting a conservative approach to participation in regional and national sports tournaments while the Omicron surge is with us.

To clarify, students only need to self-isolate if:

• They are unwell

• They receive a positive test - please advise us immediately

• Someone in their household has a positive test

Students do not need to self-isolate simply because they know someone who has tested positive.