Kia ora everyone,

As we finish off Term 1 I would like to thank all of the families that came to school yesterday to take part in the 3-way learning conferences. The home-school partnership is instrumental to ensuring success for our students and I always encourage contacting your student's teachers or any of our staff if you ever have any concerns or questions.

On Monday we held our academic assembly to celebrate and acknowledge those students who achieved Merit or Excellence subject and certificate endorsements. Its worth mentioning again that our results from last year were amongst the highest in the region and I'm incredibly proud of our students. A highlight for me was listening to our guest speaker, Sophie Dempster, who attended Waimate High School and left as Dux of the school in 2014, share some words of wisdom with our students. She is now working in human resources at a large law firm in Christchurch.

Today, the weather cooperated and we were able to hold our annual pavement art competition. It was really tough to decide the winners as the competition was so good! Results have not yet been published but we'll share those results along with photographs soon.

Finally, there is more strike action to inform you of next term. The PPTA have advised us that strike action will continue and increase during Term 2, unless a settlement is reached.

The proposed strike actions are as follows:-

a one day strike on the 9th May - school will be closed
'rostering home' of different year levels - this means that on a day that a particular year level is rostered home. They will not be able to come to school but the rest of the school operates normally. This only applies to students in Years 9 to 13. The schedule is as follows:
- Year 11 - 4th May and 25th May
- Year 13 - 11th May and 30th May
- Year 9 - 16th May and 8th June
- Year 10 - 17th May and 6th June
- Year 12 - 1st June

If the strike action is called off, I will let know but please keep an eye on our website or facebook page.

Have a wonderful and relaxing break,

Jo