BOT Elections

It is great to see our community has a strong interest in the running of our school. We had 8 nominations for our Board of Trustees. A sign of our community wanting to support and ensure Winchester Rural caters and is responsive to all the needs of our children and whanau.

Our outgoing Board have worked extremely hard over the last 3 years and I thank them for their commitment to ensuring we are doing our utmost in providing best practice learning opportunities.

I would like to acknowledge the BOT members who are stepping down at these elections -our board chairperson Shane Gilkison, Toni Morrison and Nathan Hole. They’ve contributed much over their term on our board providing strong governance and been supportive of teachers and the leadership team at school. Actually we’re not losing their expertise entirely as Nathan has kindly agreed to continue working as part of our Finance Committee until the end of the year to help integrate the new board member who takes over this portfolio. Shane has been involved in setting up a new property initiative as part of our 10 year property plan and he will also continue to work alongside us until this is finalised. The board was fortunate to have the insight and fresh perspectives that Toni brought and these will be missed. 

However we now look forward to the ideas that newly elected members  will contribute. This new group of people will help us to ensure the school is moving in a positive direction, with strong governance, going into the next 3 years.

Safe and Sound Homeward Bound

At the end of the day our main intention is to make sure that your child safely arrives in the place they need to be. Many of these arrangements are routine and don’t change, but with recently arrived new children, the winter sports codes starting up again and ad hoc appointments with parents needing to pick up their child instead of them going on the bus, there is the potential for many changes to the normal schedules. We are always very mindful that this can lead to children being accidentally left off a bus or alternatively put onto a bus when a parent arrives to pick them up. 

As you can imagine with almost 150 children milling around it could easily get confusing for either the children or teachers about arrangements. To make sure that at the end of the day your children are stress free and get to the places they need to be we’ve had a rethink about end of day arrangements. Some of you have most probably noticed your child is meeting at a different space. Please note the following:

*A reminder that it is really important to contact the school in advance - preferably before 2.30pm - if there are changes being made about after school arrangements for your child.

*We have made sure that families are always in the same groups for the roll, unless alternative arrangements have been made.

*We ask on dry days that all children sit in their groups and wait quietly for the teacher to read out their names.

*When it’s raining children go to the classroom of the teacher who calls out their roll.

*Even if parents or caregivers are nearby it is important that the children wait with their group until their name has been called, rather than wandering off and leaving the teacher to search for them. Please encourage your child to sit with their group.

*When a child’s name is read out we expect they will reply politely, ‘yes thank you’ or ‘I’m here thank you’. This is another way we embed our value of respect.

*We ask that children and their caregivers who are leaving to walk or go home in a car only use the side gate by Totara (Reading Recovery Room - old dental clinic). This gate is right by the crossing for Rise Road where a teacher supervises children crossing. This will mean that bus children will not be mixing with walkers as they go through the gates.

*Please use our crossing if you have parked your car across from the school, as only having one flow of people crossing the road at one point helps drivers coming along the road to see us and is a safety precaution.

*If you do park across the road from the school please make sure your car is a suitable distance from the corner of Rise Road and Maddren Street. If cars are parked right on the corner it can reduce visibility for other drivers.

*We provide hi vis vests as another safety measure for all our children and expect that they will wear them every day both to and from school.

*If your child is travelling on a bus and there is no adult waiting for them, the bus drivers will contact the school so that I can try to get in touch with a parent or caregiver. If I can’t contact anyone then our driver will bring your child back to school. This is a board procedure to ensure children are safely in the hands of caregivers at the end of the day and not left on the side of the road unsupervised.

We hope you can appreciate that until your child is safely with the adult taking them home, we are responsible for them. We want to make sure your child is safe and feeling happy and stress free as they leave our school.

Below are the places where the children assemble.

Group                             Dry days                                               Rainy Days

Country bus              Outside Karaka with Mrs Coombs                In Matai

Orari bus 1                Outside Manuka with Whaea Julz                In Pohutukawa

(families A-H)

Orari bus 2                 Outside Nikau with Mr McKerracher           In Rimu

(families J-W)

Walkers group 1         In front of library ramp with Miss VB         In Karaka

Walkers group 1         Outside library with Miss Orsler                 In Nikau

Walkers group 3         Outside Library with Mrs Clarke                 In Kowhai

                                              or Mrs Stamps                                                      

School News and Communications Survey

Thanks to all who filled in this survey at the end of Term 1. We had an incredibly good return with over 80% of our families responding. This was great as it gave us a very clear picture of whether our school community as a whole was receiving our news and also enabled us to pinpoint which of our families were not able to access all of our communications. From this survey we have learnt that all families have a device to access online communications, and that most have multiple devices. The majority of our parents are confidently using seesaw.

Our teachers have been asked to individually check in with families that voiced they were not confident accessing the seesaw learning journals or didn’t know seesaw allowed them to private message. They will support these parents in becoming more confident in using the seesaw e portfolio.

Please let your child’s teacher know if you have any difficulties access our school communications. We are always trying to improve our systems and open to suggestions.

Noho ora mai - all the best

Tre