Kia ora everyone,
You’ll be aware that Minister of Education Chris Hipkins has announced the move to Orange at 11:59pm tonight.
The decision to move to Orange has been made on public health advice and reflects that we are moving past the peak of cases and our health system is able to cope. We are seeing that cases are declining due to high levels of vaccination and natural immunity after infection.
I wanted to give you an update on what the move to Orange means for our school.
At Orange, face masks are no longer required at school. However public health advice is that masks continue to be strongly encouraged when indoors. Wearing a mask is a key health measure that slows the spread of COVID-19 in indoor settings. For that reason, we ask that visitors to the school, including parents and whānau, wear a mask whenever they are indoors on school grounds.
We also ask that your child continues to bring a mask to school every day. There may be times that we’ll ask them to wear a mask, too – for example, if there are a high number of cases at school or in the community.
At Orange, students aged 12 and above are still required to wear a face mask on school or public transport.
We will continue to keep all the other health measures in place at school that we know slow the spread of COVID-19. These include ensuring our indoor spaces are well-ventilated, maintaining good hand hygiene and cough and sneeze etiquette, appropriate physical distancing whenever we can and, most importantly, staying home if we are sick.
Please remember that tomorrow is a mufti day with a gold coin donation that will be supporting Kidscan.
Here's our daily summary:
Total positive cases: 88 students and 5 staff members
Current cases: 28 students and 3 staff members
Recovered students back at school: 60
Current isolating household contacts: 13 students and 1 staff member
Attendance rate: 67%
Take care,
Jo Hunnikin
Principal/Tumuaki