Read more about: Staff Only Days, School contributions, Curriculum / School Trips and Swimming survey

Staff only days

In the employment contract negotiations last year our union negotiated 8 staff days (teacher only days) over 3 years which do not need to be paid back with extra days at the end of the year. The days are given to assist staff with their jobs, wellbeing and workload.

Our school, like most others, are going to use three days this year. Our plans at this stage are

1. A marae visit / staff time.

2. A Community Of Learning wellbeing course/ staff time

3. Staff professional learning and workload

NEWSFLASH. We have been lucky enough to secure a visit to our local marae for our staff on the 30th March 2020. As a community we ask for your support in arranging care for your children on this day. We appreciate this can be a challenge, and thank you in advance for your support and help on this day.

In terms of planning ahead we can tell you that day 2 is on Friday, May 29.

SCHOOL CONTRIBUTIONS

The Ministry of Education have made it quite clear to schools that education should be free. The reality is we just could not survive and thrive with the money they give us in our operation grant each year. We rely heavily on international students, PFA and the families in our community to allow us to offer the quality teaching and programmes we do for our children.

This money goes toward learning assistants who support every teacher and learner, lower class sizes, our movement programme which impacts everyone, our gifted and talented programme which impacts over 120 children, our performing arts programme which impacts everyone and learning resources which also impact everyone.

We are very lucky to have the supportive community we do. Thank you.

Please keep contributing in any ways you can to allow these great things to keep happening in our school.

CURRICULUM/ CLASS TRIPS

This year we will be sending out a note to parents at the appropriate year level, to get your feedback on how much you value the activities we offer, and whether they should continue. This includes class trips and year group camps.

Every experience like this incurs a cost and we need to see if you value the experience enough to contribute to the costs.

As a school we cannot afford to cover the costs of something like a year 4 camp, so we rely on parents contributing to make this happen. The reality once again is, without your support, experiences like school camps can not occur.

The first activity we are asking for feedback on is the Year 3 to 6 swimming lessons. Please click this link if you haven't already completed the swimming survey - thank you.

The survey closes Monday 2 March 2020.