Kia ora e te whānau,

It is quite unbelievable that today is the last day of Term 1! It has been a great end to the term with a wide range of our ākonga being involved in a number of events, including the Student Exec attending a Leadership Day organised by the Kāhui Ako. Congratulations to Hunter who came 3rd in Y6 backstroke and Clark who came 3rd Open Butterfly and 2nd in the Open Medley. Well done to our Kapa Haka group that performed at the celebration of the opening of the intersection on Tuesday.

The Fete was amazing! What a turn out. Attendee numbers are reported as being over 8000 people. Congratulations to the fete committee who organised yet another superb event that raised about $50K towards the upgrade of our swimming pool. A big thank you to the following people: Jeanette Neal, Lissa Birse, Sarah Kippax, Kim Churton, Rosie Sorenson, Adele O'Connor, Kate Pugh, Becs Hooper, Sonja Beaumont, Abbey Colgate, Hannah Helm, Emma Wooding, Bec Lowery, Pip Gould, Kelly Roberts and the many volunteers on the day. We are super proud and grateful for all that you do.

The pool is now closed for the season and has been emptied in preparation for painting over the next month or so.

A huge thank you to the following people: Lyndon Endicott-Davies, Emma McKay, Vivien Watson, Olivia Whelan, Kate Pugh, Pip Gould, Janelle McIntosh, Adele Staples, Joe Gradwell and John Willats for their dedication and effort to providing pool keys, pool maintenance and testing, taking the covers off and keeping the pool area clean. Without these dedicated people we would not be able to open the pool to the community outside of school hours.

The new intersection has made quite a difference to the traffic flow around and leading up to the school. We will now be working with the council to review our safe travel plan. There has been a noticeable increase in the number of people walking, biking or scootering from Wilfield, which is great. There has been some concern of children not following road rules and not using the crossing. We will work on this next term. If your child is walking, biking or scootering they must use the road crossing. Can you also please remind them that when crossing over entrance ways they need to be alert to the traffic around them. More on this next term.

Now that the lights are up and going and there is less traffic management going on, we have decided to go back to a 3.00pm finish for ALL children EXCEPT if they are going home by bus. Bus children will still be let out of class at 2.50pm so that we endeavour to get buses away by 3.00pm. This improves the visibility and decreases congestion around the front of the school.

Just a reminder that Term 2 does not start for our student's until Wednesday 26th April, as Monday 24th is a schoolwide Teacher Only Day and Tuesday 25th is ANZAC Day.

The ANZAC Day service on Tuesday 25th, is being held on our front court starting at 10am. This is a great event that commemorates those that served and died in all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. Two of our ambassadors will speak about what ANZAC Day means to them.

Have a safe and enjoyable Term 2 break. I hope you all find some time to do the things you love and that the Easter Bunny brings you lots of eggs (or carrots).

Ngā mihi nui

Tracey