Kia ora koutou e nga matua, e nga whānau, Talofa lava, Malo e lelei, Konichiwa!

What an eventful couple of weeks! By the sounds of it, most children and whānau are ready for a break.

Tuesday week ago I witnessed some of our ākonga draw on all of their DRIVER competencies and values when faced with a challenging and testing situation. For those of you not aware, one of our school buses collided with a van shortly after 3pm. Fortunately all involved were shaken but safe. In my nearly 30 years of education I don’t think I have ever been prouder of a group of children who handled the situation with such resilience. Extra special mention to the bus monitors and senior students who really stood up and utilised all the skills that they had been taught. We would like to thank everyone who stopped to help. Your support was very much appreciated.

Our positive Covid-19 cases continue to remain steady on an average of 2 cases a day. We have (or have had) a total of 56 positive student cases to date. That is only 13% of our roll. We have (or have had) 20% of staff testing positive. Some of which are part time been a larger number student's as household contacts. Nevertheless we continue to have an attendance rate of around 85% which is high in today's climate. As mentioned in Friday's Covid update (see website link if you missed it), we will be working through our risk management processes to ensure that when we are back next term our ākonga are as safe as possible. In the meantime we will continue with the status quo in regard to managing Covid until the end of this term.

During the holidays can you please continue to email the school office@westmelton.school.nz with notifications of your child/ren being a positive case. This will ensure that our data is kept up to date.

We are in the initial stages of reviewing our Safe Travel Plan. Please complete the Safe Travel Plan Survey by Friday 6 May (end of the first week of Term 2). If you are interested in being part of the Safe Travel team to review our current plan and help implement any changes, please email me principal@westmelton.school.nz The review is very timely as we head into ‘Active Autumn’ next term, an initiative the Student Exec is organising in conjunction with Selwyn Council.

I see that Dancing with the Stars is back on television soon. We will have our own dancing stars as we head into our biannual programme of ‘Dances in Schools’. This is a fantastic two weeks of a dance session per day for all ākonga. Look out for more information in the next day or two.

Next term we are losing a well respected and valued staff member from our Learning Support team. I would like to thank Jacob Miles for his dedication and support of our ākonga, wishing him all the best for his next career move into Air Traffic Control. We will miss his sense of humour and team collegiality.

I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank you for all your support. I wish you all a Happy Easter and a safe holiday.