And that's it....another year has come to an end and as a board we had our last meeting for 2024 and took some time to reflect.

Kia ora e te whānau,

You'll see within this newsletter the results of our recent parent survey which show an overwhelmingly positive vibe toward our kura and the work of our kaiako. Thank you to all who contributed and you'll see here some of the summarised trends across the questions asked and some next steps for the board/school leadership. We appreciate the time you took out of your day to complete this and the constructive comments that many of you provided for how our school may move forward into the future. Most importantly your feedback helped to reinforce our 'why' and our special kaupapa in how we operate.

You'll remember that this survey also looked at feedback around the provision of school camps and you'll see there was great support for continuing with the current format of our camp offering. I was lucky enough to be a parent helper at Lakewood Lodge with our Tūī Rua Camp earlier this term and was blown away by the attitudes of our tamariki who gave everything a go with a smile on their face. This was in spite of some of the fears that they initially held. These are powerful learning experiences shared by a cool bunch of kids and I observed amazing inclusion, equity and resilience from all who attended. Thanks to those other parent helpers and all the teachers involved in delivering camps in 2024 as part of our EOTC (Education Outside The Classroom) approach.

At our board meeting we have a regular lens on health and safety for our tamariki and the EOTC space, as you can imagine, is a particular focus for us given some of the risk involved. We are impressed by the planning and effort that our kaiako put into making these experiences safe but fun!

We also do some standard (and maybe more mundane) things at our last board meeting of the year like talk about a draft budget for 2025! The positive is that our school continues to be in excellent financial health thanks to the efforts of Tony, Amanda, Heemi (our board finance role) and others. 

All the best for the holiday break and Bring on 2025....

Noho ora mai,

Andrew Corkill (Board Chair)