A letter from our principal Rachel Skelton.

Firstly, from all of us here at the college we would like to thank our local and parent community for all of your support, love and aroha over what has been an extremely difficult start to the term for us. It is often in times of great tragedy that we see communities really band together and support one another. This has certainly been the case for our school community following the death of Mr Milne from an unexpected medical event. Amazing examples of our school community working together have been highlighted through many events such as our recent non uniform day which raised $1204.

We have also seen some amazing examples of authentic learning this term. Our recent market day highlights just one of these authentic learning opportunities. It was extra special to open this event up to Clearview Primary and to the general public. The learners worked hard to produce a huge array of delicious products to sell and with beautiful weather to boot this event was a huge success. A big thanks to Mr McBrearety and Mr Stokes for their work towards this event.

On Thursday this week I was privileged to be able to watch the Waitaha School production of Giraffes Can't Dance. Wow, there was some awesome talent from all of Waitaha School. It was fantastic to see our learners from Te Rito Harakeke and their great performances. It also was a proud moment watching the Rolleston College learners who volunteered to help with front of house, backstage and in the technical aspects of the show.

This week at Celebrations Ethan Richards-White (Student BOT Rep) and I have been talking to the learners about the building work that will be done around the school starting these xmas holidays with some internal changes and also the major construction of the new block on the horizon. The changes will be fantastic and will further enhance learning opportunities for our school. Once we have a good set of colour drawings we will update progress etc on our website. An immediate change to allow for construction that we have discussed with learners is a change in parking for those learners who drive to school. From 16th November we are asking our learners who are driving to school to park in the Springston Rolleston road car park instead of the Broadlands Drive carpark. This is to ensure we prioritise safe parking for learners while construction is occurring. We would really appreciate it if this message was also able to be reinforced and reminded at home.

I look forward to catching up with many of you at events over the coming weeks including prizegivings and our CASE evening.

Rachel Skelton

Principal