Welcome back!!! I was on road patrol on Wednesday, the first day back, and it was great to see so many happy parents, and tamariki of course!

 It was lovely to catch up with so many people this week and find out what has been happening over the past six weeks.

I regularly visit rooms and I have chatted with many of our Reddie Learners over the past three days and the open afternoon we held. I have been told many tales of their Christmas/New Year activities and adventures and chatted with them about their learning as well. Our tamariki have been keen to share and also pleased to be back at school.

Welcome to new tamariki and kaiako/staff

We have had a number of new entrant tamariki start this term and one or two who have joined us at other levels. We welcomed them on Wednesday. We will be having a formal welcome for new tamariki, whanau and staff in a week or two. Look out for a notice about this. In the meantime we say welcome to our new parents/whanau at Redwood School.

New staff joining us this year: 

• Ellie Cherry, Deputy Principal and Learning Needs Co-Ordinator
  
• Lynda Selwood Year 1/2, Room 1
  
• Cindy Giddens Year 1/2, Room 8 
  
• Chris Thurlow Year 4/5, Room 16
  

The cost of uniform, fees and school donations

There has been significant chat in the media/online about school uniform, school fees and school donations. In some schools these are set very high but in most, careful consideration has been undertaken regarding these and their impact on family finances. Redwood School keeps its uniform costs as low as possible. We would have one of the lower uniform costs in Christchurch. We are very aware of the financial strain families can be under.  Any school 'fees' pay directly for trips, performances and activities relevant to your child's learning. They cover a specific additional cost for a school activity. Camp fees are kept as low as possible and parents/whanau have ample pre-warning of these and how they can be paid in lump sum or over time. School activities, including swimming programme, are significantly subsidised by the school and PTA to keep costs down and ensure all children can participate.  The school donation is a voluntary contribution to the school. The donations are used at the discretion of the Board of Trustees but help cover such aspects as ICT equipment, play equipment, etc, not provided by the Ministry of Education or under-funded by them. Without your donations we are limited as to what we are able to provide in way of resourcing. Most parents give the school donation, which we hugely appreciate. We encourage you to tangibly support Redwood School via the donation and/or by getting directly involved and volunteering to help.

Education should be free...

I quite often hear this comment. The fact is that it isn't 'free' and hasn't been in all the time I have been in teaching (nearly 40 years!). If we are to provide a good level of resourcing to our tamariki, the donations from parents of money and time (our wonderful Board of Trustees, PTA and parent helpers being examples) makes a huge difference to our tamariki. Your donations of money and time are significant contributions to the future of our tamariki. We want our tamariki to get the best deal we can give them... we meaning staff and parents/whanau.

A BIG thank you to all our supportive parents... So many of you do give willingly to Redwood School in terms of money and time, which we appreciate greatly.

John StackhouseTumuaki/Principal