He mihi mahana ki a koutou katoa - Warm greetings to all.

Congratulations to our tamariki who performed in the Strum Strike Blow concert last night. Mrs B described our items as a great performance! A huge thank you to Paul Lee for preparing his group of performers and others over the years. We wish him all the best as he moves to Wellington.

Unfortunately New Zealand has a very poor record of student attendance at school. Our staff regularly check attendance. We are worried about trends - a certain day tamariki are consistently away and like the national trends ours is Mondays and Fridays. Unless your child is sick they must legally be at school. Chronic absenteeism is when a child is absent for more that 10% of their time during the school year or over a period of time. Chronic Absenteeism directly impacts not just on learning outcomes but the Dunedin Developmental Study shows it impacts life outcomes!

Many of you are receiving letters from me as your children's attendance is below 90% of days they could attend. We also sent home the chart giving you details and it has a chart that shows the trends of days away. This information is also on the school APP.

I am aware some of these children are sick but as a parent look at the trends. When you are busy in the morning and your child tells you they are unwell you might not remember that they told you the same thing the week before on the same same day! It is a good idea for you to investigate why that might be.

If your child is unwell but after 3 days you think they are not quite well enough to attend school but well enough to have a go at doing some work you can email the teacher. They will send you the hapara platform link (this is the one we used through lockdown but it has been updated).

Congratulations to our Year 3 & 4 Kapahaka group who performed at Cashmere View today. We like to stay connected to our wider community, young and old!

You will also see in our newsletter that our tamariki are involved in matariki events this and next week including sharing with tamariki from Early Childhood Centres.

Best wishes to the Years 2's tonight as they share their learning with their whānau. They have been practicing hard and are now ready to share their learning.

It's a very busy week next week for some of our tamariki, especially Wednesday, with some running in the Centre Cross Country Competition and nearly 70 performing at the Kahukura Music Festival on Wednesday night. Best wishes to everyone. I know you will make us proud whether you are running or performing!

Kellie Englefield has been been writing articles in this newsletter about reporting to you as parents. Please read these informative articles.

Next Friday, 25 June is the Teachers paid Union Meeting.  An email was sent to you about this and it's been in the newsletter a number of weeks. If your child can't go home at 1:15pm on that day please email the teacher. We only have a small number of adults here at school as most of our teachers are union members. We need to know who is staying. If we don't get an email we will assume they are to go home with others at 1:15pm on that day.  Please support our hard working teachers.

Timetable for this day

No Zone Sport

9-10 Assembly/ Sausage Sizzle will go ahead

Normal play

12:30 All school will be eating

1:15pm Children sent home. Children not going home to hall