Covid Update
27th January 2022
Kia ora koutou
We hope that you found some time to relax and recharge with family and friends over the summer break ready for the year ahead.
As schools are now open for all students, our teachers will be back full-time face to face teaching. This means an end to online learning at this time. If your child has been directed to isolate at home by the Ministry of Health, or has complex medical needs and has been advised by a medical professional to remain at home please touch base with their class teacher who will set you up with some self-directed learning for your child. Please understand that this won’t look like the online learning of lockdowns as our teachers remain in the classroom.
Beginning of Year Powhiri
Unfortunately, we have had to cancel this to mitigate the risks involved with large gatherings and in line with our protocols around keeping our teams as separate as possible.
Face coverings
Children in Years 4 –8 must wear face coverings when inside at school when we are at Red. Year 1-3 children are also encouraged by the Ministry of Health to wear face coverings. We will support families and students with the choices they make for our younger students.
All teachers will be wearing Ministry approved masks while inside. All staff have been double vaccinated and it is now mandated that all staff must receive their booster shot no later than 6 months after their second vaccine.
Vaccination for five- to 11-year-olds
Vaccination, including a booster shot, remains an important tool to help prevent the most serious harm from the COVID-19 virus. If children and young adults who have been vaccinated do develop COVID-19, they are far less likely to get seriously ill and less likely to transmit the virus to others.
The free five- to 11-year-old vaccination programme is now underway and more than 100,000 children in New Zealand have had their first dose.
Managing cases in our school
We have a good contact tracing system in place so that if there is a confirmed case who has been at school while infectious, we can quickly identify who was a close contact of that person. We will then quickly advise those contacts of what they need to do. The aim is that schools will be able to remain open during the outbreak with mitigation in place and possible partial closures.
Please make sure your contact details we have on file are up to date, so we can get in touch with you if needed.
School events in Term One
Our ‘Meet the Teacher’ night will be done as a video and sent home to families in week 3. We have chosen to switch the Term One parent partnership meetings to online – more information will come out about this closer to the time. Camp and EOTC can both go ahead at red level, however we would like to monitor case numbers to decide if the mitigation factors that we have in place will ensure the safety of all of our students, staff and whanau. We will be contacting the Year 6 and Year 5 parents in the lead up to these events.
Pick up and drop offs
We are considering continuing the staggered pick up times we had in place during level 3.2 (December 2021). Our main reason for doing this is to reduce the contact where possible between children from different teams and year groups, and limiting the number of adults on the field at the same time. This decision will have an impact on parents so before making a decision we would just like to gauge opinion from the community. Can you please respond to this one question survey to indicate your preference.
https://forms.gle/xhmN3uysVXCkYPh27
We will send out communication on Tuesday to confirm the pick up and drop off arrangements.
Office
The office is open on Tuesday 1st February and Wednesday 2nd February from 9-3. We ask that if you have any in person payments or enrollments that you come in during these times rather than when the children are back at school. The office staff are also available by phone on these days to help if you are having any issues with online payments / kindo.
On Tuesday, we will send out further communication, detailing how we will operate at school in Red. Your child’s safety is our priority as is their education, their well-being, and their ability to connect and build relationships with others, so we are very excited to be welcoming all our students back to school on Thursday.
Ngā mihi
Moira Blair
