Hello everyone

In the last newsletter we introduced the new Board of Trustees. Since then we have co-opted two further members onto the Board. Co-opting additional members is accepted practice in New Zealand, and in our case AJ Wilson and Hayley Poutama have joined us. The addition of the two new Board members gives us broader representation across the school and ensures a greater range of voices are part of school governance, and we welcome them aboard.

Community Consultation

We had a great reaction to our recent consultation, with almost two hundred respondents. This time around we introduced some new questions and tweaked some of the existing questions. Virtually all the results were similar or higher than the 2021 survey. The 2021 results are shown in brackets.

 96% (89%) agree or strongly agree that Papakōwhai School has high expectations for children’s learning

 100% (98%) agree or strongly agree that their children have access to effective learning resources

 93% (89%) agree or strongly agree their children’s understanding of Māori and Pasifika cultures is increasing through their learning at school

 96% (83%) agree or strongly agree their children are engaged in their learning at school

 96% (87%) agree or strongly agree Papakōwhai School is a safe, supportive and positive environment

Full results are available to view on the Board of Trustees page on the school website. In addition to the above we asked whether the change in school hours and road safety initiatives implemented earlier in the year had made travel to and from school safer. 94% of respondents agreed the initiatives have helped. While there are still actions we can take, it is pleasing to see things are heading in the right direction. We also asked about interest in a holiday programme based at school. There was enough support for this idea for us to develop more detail. We will let you know when we have something to share. As always, we appreciate those that took the time to complete the survey. The results and the comments give the Board a useful insight into how the community views the school. We also surveyed the students and school staff, both returning similar results to previous years.

Planning for 2023

We are currently developing a property plan for 2023. We will share the details with you once they have been finalised, however some of the items on it include maintenance on the hall and installing heat pumps in the remaining classrooms. Currently half the classes use heat pumps while the rest are heated by radiators powered by a gas boiler. Once all the heat pumps have been installed the intention is to decommission the boiler.

Kind regards

Rodney Strong

Chair