Kia ora koutou.
I would like to take this time to thank you all for your support over a very ‘trying’ time with a great deal of disruption and interruption. This term has seen unprecedented levels of sickness in our school and community. With the rules being so tight about staying home if sick, we have had as many as sixty students away on a given day. Interestingly, we have never experienced a ‘peak’ of covid cases in our school, with between 5-10 students being away per week either isolating with covid, or because they are a household contact. We are privileged to work in such a fabulous community and I appreciate all of the kind words and appreciation received from our whanau.
We have been very deliberate in ensuring we have remained open for all year levels and we look forward to getting through this next phase of the pandemic so we can look forward to an exciting and learning focussed second half of the year.
Reporting
We are working hard as a staff to ensure we can report to you all against the essential learning we are bringing to the students in our ‘Big Ideas’ Curriculum. This is a long process, and in the interests of full disclosure we are still not sure if our student management system (our main database for student information and assessment record keeping) will be able to do what we want it to do. We are committed to this process, and will keep you updated as we go. We plan to have a first run of this new structure ready for the end of the year.
Staff Only Day
In order to work on our school reporting structures above, it has been necessary to build another Staff Only Day into our school year. We have decided to use Friday the 16th of September for this and have extended our school year by one day. We hope that by then, we will have got over most of the seasonal sickness currently affecting our operation and that we can have a full complement of staff to get this mahi well underway. We realise this is inconvenient for our whanau, but we will really need this day to support us to achieve a significant goal for this year. Again, we thank you for your patience as we work through this.
Board Elections
Don’t forget this is coming up - thanks to those who have discussed this with me. PLEASE do contact me if you are interested in becoming part of our Board.
Finally…
Coming up in Term 3:
Week 1 - Te Ara and Manaaki Classroom visits to the Suter Gallery
Week 2 - Tu Atea Classroom visits to the Brook Sanctuary
3rd of August - BoT Nominations close (Week 2 of Term)
16th of August - Yr ⅚ Netball Tournament (week 4 of Term)
25th of August - BoT Meeting (Week 5 of Term)
6th September - Tasman Rugby Union year 5 and 6 tackle rugby tournament (Week 7)
7th September - BoT Election Day
12-14 September - National Monitoring Study at EGS (Week 8)
13th September - Board Election Results Announced
16th September - STAFF ONLY DAY
20th September - Yr 3 and 4 Hockey Tournament (Week 9)
22nd September - First meeting of our New Board.
27th September - Yr 5 and 6 Hockey Tournament
30th September - Term Ends at 3pm
Please have a wonderful next few weeks.
:-)
Isaac Day
Principal
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