As the weather gets cooler, and sometimes the mornings get foggier, I am urging parents to please support our children to be safe by ensuring your child wears their compulsory hi-vis vest to school; this can then be donned at school for the journey home.

During the recent school holidays Rob Hunt [presiding Board member] and I met with some of the traffic safety team at the Selwyn Council. We discussed our schools concerns with traffic, congestion, visibility, driver behaviour, parking and ultimately the safety of our learners, staff and community as part of the up and coming consultation on safer speeds around schools. The Council have put together a survey they would like you to complete to get a better understanding of how children travel to and from school, and to help develop a plan for the future. Please complete this survey and help us to have a strong voice about traffic safety in Selwyn:

yoursay.selwyn.govt.nz/schooltravelplansurvey2023

Here are a couple more tips to help keep everyone safe:

* Please do not drop children off or park on yellow lines

* Please do not complete u-turns in front of the school

* Please use our parent carpark safely and observe the kiss and drop/collect zones, please also drive to the front of these lines

* Please take care along busy and narrow roads where lots of children cross e.g. Bethany, Burnham School Rd

We encourage physically active travel to school but * Please regularly check the route your child [seniors] may be walking, scooting or bike to school and ensure they understand safe crossing points. Please also help them to know how to 'share the pavement'

The term is racing by quickly and the staff are busy planning lots of events and learning opportunities. Thank you to the Board for funding a show for our Year 1 and 2 learners last week in the gym. We also have all of our Year 5-8 learners participating in the local schools Active Spectacular from next week at the Sports Centre, this was previously called 'Winter Sport.' You may have also had HERO notices informing you about the popular annual Talent Show planned for next term with children invited to start practising now. A HERO notice has also gone home to families about Ag Week in Week 9 with the hopes of having a farm animals 'petting zoo' at school on the Friday afternoon. Please contact Miss Claudia Copeland [claudiacopeland@westrolleston.school.nz] if you can help.

Well done to Samreen Pannu and Charlee Hadley who represented our school at the Rotary Quiz for Year 7/8 learners this week. Good luck to our teams competing in the zone basketball champs on Friday! Big thanks to Mr Kyle Seckold and Miss Rebecca Lambert for their organisation and to our staff and parent/college coaches: Annette Hynes, Nick Prouting, Riley Dunlop and Mrs Amanda Clarkson.

Finally, as the winter kicks in we also see an increase in learner and staff illnesses. Yesterday 10% of our staff were sick and I would like to acknowledge our senior leadership team including Trish Hann [executive office manager and principals PA] who spend a lot of time from 5.30am in the morning trying to organise and coordinate this. There is a definite teacher shortage and we are not always able to get relief teachers so I also acknowledge the impact this can have on everyone. Thank you for showing manaakitanga [care and kindness] towards our team in all of your correspondence including emails.

Ngā mihi

Sylvia