Happy new year, welcome back everyone and a warm welcome to our new West Rolleston Primary families. We hope you love being part of our school community.

I had a lovely Christmas and break with my family. I was very proud to attend the graduation ceremony to receive my Masters in Education endorsed in Leadership from the University of Canterbury. I have been working on this part-time over the past few years so I am quite looking forward to no more assignments and essay writing at weekends this year!

We have enjoyed a really lovely start to the new year welcoming six  full-time teachers, and one part-time teacher - Rachel Pickering, Madeleine Walker, Nicole Sutherland, Kyle Seckold, Sarah Kerkhofs, George Harnett and Liz Campion. We also welcomed fifty seven new learners and our current school roll is 492!

We are absolutely delighted with our new air-conditioning units courtesy of the Ministry of Education. I honestly cannot stress enough the difference these have already made in learning studios particularly in the afternoons. What fantastic timing with the weather we have had too.

With our increasing roll it has also been imperative that we provide more hard courts for our learners for fitness and PE programmes and for morning tea and lunch-times. We are VERY grateful to the BoT and to GROW [our PTA] for funding these and hope the new courts will open next week.

A big thank you to Shannon Spencer and the hard-working team of GROW for organising the fun family event on the back field after school yesterday. The children who were able to attend loved it and it was a good opportunity for our teachers to mingle outside with families. We have goal setting conferences scheduled for Week 6 of this term so an invite to these will be emailed out in the next two weeks.

Finally, in terms of communication studio updates will be emailed out to families at the beginning of a school week and the school newsletter and any other notices will be emailed home on a Thursday. We try to be true to our value of sustainable environments by limiting the amount of paper notices we send home. We often duplicate some of the emailed messages through facebook and we are investigating the viability of using a communication app. 

I am looking forward to a busy term full of wonderful learning and teaching opportunities for all.

Ngā mihi nui

Sylvia