Principal's Word

Kia ora everybody,

Wow - it's the end of week 9 already. I'm pleased to say the week has ended on a high - literally! This morning I was helping with the inaugural Year 8 dry ice rocket competition. To say I was in my happy place is an understatement - although it was a bit fresh out at the launching site. Although everyone had the same design brief the results varied considerably and these will be reported on soon. However, one rocket did travel close to 300 metres! 

Myself and some prefects had an early start this morning at a leadership breakfast at the Waimate Events Centre. We listened to Brendan Grant, a maintenance manager from Fonterra, who shared with us what he's learned about himself on his own leadership journey. His story was incredibly profound and I would like to thank Brendan for sharing it with us. 

We've recently made some changes to our emailing system so if you've emailed the school and have yet to receive a response, please try again as some of our emails have been redirecting incorrectly. We are also about to change over our phone system and I hope this won't cause any disruption.

Right at the start of the week I travelled to Rathkeale College in Masterton to look at their agriculture programme as they have a very well developed and popular programme. It is always useful visiting other schools and learning from them. I would like to thank our hosts Coadette and Liz for allowing us to look around their school and sharing with us their resources. 

COVID update.

It's the same story as last week with COVID. We have lots of sickness but its not COVID.  Our average attendance is still sitting at 70%.  If our numbers remain low then from next term I will not provide any further COVID updates unless things change considerably. 

The government announcement this week does have some changes to the rules around reinfections of COVID. Previously, the rule was if you had had COVID then you didn't need to isolate again until after 90 days of your first infection. This window has now been reduced to 29 days. Please call the school if you have any questions about whether your child can attend school. 

Total positive cases: 137 students and 16 staff members 

Current cases: 2 students 

Isolating household contacts: 4 students 

Recovered students back at school: 135

Average attendance for this week: 70% 

Have a lovely weekend, I hope to see some of you at the school Ball tomorrow,

Jo