The immensly respected past Principal of our School died recently at age 91.

On Saturday,  Deputy Principal Mrs Stacey Gribben and I attended the funeral of our second longest and fondly remembered past Principal Mr Ken Duncan. Mrs Gribben was asked to speak and did this superbly as did Mr Danny Knudson and his wife Julie. The Knudsons co-authored a book for the School's 150th held in 2008. Julie worked as a secretary at Wakari for many years and had worked with Ken during his time. When Glenda Sargeant sent me the ODT notice about Ken I immediately went to this book and searched out the chapter written about Mr Duncan titled "Ken Duncan: Twenty Years at the Helm 1969 - 1988."

An excerpt stood out as it was very timely with happenings in the School last week. It reads as follows;

"Duncan arrived at Wakari as Principal at the beginning of June 1969, the roll was 453 and several classes had about 40 children. Two months after his arrival he initiated parent-teacher interviews as a mid-year communication exchange. Ten-minute interviews were timetabled for all parents who wished to discuss their children's education. In August, he reported to the School Committee Parent Teacher interviews were very well attended by parents, and teachers appear very satisfied with the use they were able to make of these."

Last week we had 290 out of our 297 children and parents have a 15-minute interview with staff. This is a stunning attendance rate (98%) something of which is unique across Schools. I hope these discussions were informative and painted a picture of how your child is progressing at Wakari.

I thank Ken Duncan for his foresight and our current parent community and our teachers for their efforts around these interviews.

Kind Regards

Chris