12th May 2020
COVID-19 Update – 12th May 2020
Good Morning,
Yesterday the Government announced that the country will be going to Level 2 on Thursday 14th May, meaning that schools will reopen for all students on Monday the 18th May. We look forward to welcoming our students back. At the end of last week, the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education issued public health advice and guidance for schools. They are continuing to update us this week as we prepare for our return. We will be using this week to thoroughly prepare and to ensure we continue to meet all the public health requirements. At Level 2 the Ministry guidelines are focused on:
- enabling good hygiene practices – regular washing and drying of hands and good cough and sneeze etiquette remain fundamental to preventing spread of illness such as colds, flu and COVID-19
- ensuring people with COVID-19 symptoms stay away from school
- maintaining physical distancing where practicable – in schools at Alert Level 2 this means children, young people, and staff maintaining a physical distance so that they are not breathing on or touching each other (there is no minimum distance requirement for schools at Alert Level 2)
- keeping track of people that enter your school – through your attendance register, timetable and visitor register.
We have created our Health and Safety protocols for Level 2, the draft of which is now available on our website. We continue to update this with advice coming out from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education.
As well as following the basic guidelines above we have developed a transition phase, to be reassessed after two weeks, to support the wellbeing of our students as they move back to school. During this phase we are limiting contact to their teaching teams (Rata, Kowhai and Kauri) with staggered break times. Part of the reasoning is around the sudden move from a small contained bubble to such a large school one and the fact that this may overwhelm some of our students, and families. It will also support us in transitioning back to the school day after learning at home which often had shorter periods of study with more frequent and sometimes shorter breaks. We found that those returning at Level 3 found the school day tiring. This transition phase sees break times staggered and all groups having three breaks during the day rather than the two during our standard timetable. The timetable during this phase is now available on our website.
We have much stricter drop off and pick up protocols at Level 2, to align with public health measures outside of school grounds. Physical distancing of 2 metres is recommended for parents and caregivers from people they don’t know. To avoid congestion and parents congregating at gates we are using the field for drop off and pick up. Students will not be allowed at school prior to 8:30am. They are to all enter the school via the field entrances on either Mt Eden Road, Queensway or via St Andrews Road, not through the main gate on the corner of Mt Eden and Mt Albert Road. From there Kauri students may make their way up to the crown, Kowhai up to the Kowhai courtyard or adventure playground and Rata to their classrooms. No parents are allowed past the school field. Our new, New Entrant parents have been notified of separate instructions to allow them to support their children starting school. Pick up will also be from the field. We have staggered pick up very slightly to ease congestion, parents with children in more than one team will have a short wait between teams. Rata students will come down to the field at 2:50, Kowhai at 2:55 and Kauri at 3:00pm. Kelly club will be operating again from the 18th May – they will share with families their updated protocols around pick up and drop off.
All parents and caregivers who come on site need to be noted in the visitor register. If you need to drop off your child late or pick them up early you will need to sign in at the school office and your child will be called to the office to meet you. These procedures support our contract tracing capability.
We would also like to inform you that the Teacher Only Day scheduled for the 29th May has been cancelled due to the extended time away from school for our students. Our Community of Learning will reassess later in the year opportunities for our schools to collaborate.
Finally, it would really assist us if you could quickly fill out the following survey for each of your children attending Three Kings School today. https://forms.gle/kvgNRJ9yTGp8XFeT8 If you are unsure please just indicate the most likely scenario, you can change your mind at any time either before or once school has reopened. Please just let the office know for our attendance registers.
This will help support us in understanding how many students will be returning to school and those that require support from distance learning. Please be advised that;
- Online learning will continue to be provided to all students who have not returned to school at Level 2.
- This will look different to online learning during lockdown and at Level 3 due to all staff being back at school.
- Activities will be provided, however there will be less opportunity for online meetings (google meets) and feedback as teachers resume fulltime face to face teaching alongside this.
- Teams will organise how they support online learning across the team. It may be that it is not the classroom teacher supporting aspects of this learning.
Kind regards
Moira Blair
Principal