What strange times we find ourselves in.

On behalf of the Board, I want to thank Denise for her leadership and strength during this time. It is a very challenging and emotional period for everyone, and the Board hopes you and your families stay safe over the coming weeks. Thank you to our amazing teachers and staff for supporting our children and whānau during the COVID-19 lockdown and the early start to the 2020 term one school holidays. I’m sure we all have a renewed appreciation for the teaching profession. Our online lessons have been a great success and again our gratitude to the staff for the huge effort of putting together the resources and keeping us in touch via the Seesaw and Google platforms.

We are thrilled to say that we have engaged the design services of Mark Newdick, a well known and respected landscape architect. Mark will help us make the best use of our senior school playground space to deliver what our children want ….“hanging, swinging, climbing play equipment for lots of different games including off the ground tag”. Mark will also ensure that our new playground meets all health and safety requirements in a somewhat challenging space. Mark has designed playgrounds and play spaces for many schools in NZ and overseas including Kahurangi School and Northland School. Mark’s designs will be available for discussion with our school community in due course.

There are vacancies on the Board of Trustees (BOT) for parent representatives and we will be sending out information about the trustee by-elections shortly. The BoT is the Crown entity responsible for the governance and the control of the management of the school, and are accountable for the school’s performance. We strongly encourage all parents and school whānau to get involved and make a difference. There is good information about what it means to be a parent representative on the Board of Trustees published on the New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA) website. Please feel free to contact me if you would like further information or would like to nominate yourself or another person (with their permission) at vlhawkey@yahoo.com

This prayer made a lot of sense to many of us during these trying times. It may also work for you.

Wishing you all the best for the school holidays and COVID-19 Lock-down.

Vanessa Monahan

Prayer for patience and understanding
Dear Lord, please help me.
I lay before you my tiredness and ask for new energy.
I lay before you my frustration and ask for more patience.
I lay before you my resentment and ask for peace.
I lay before you my judgement and ask for inspired understanding.
I lay before you my anger and long to be forgiving.

Please help me, dear Lord.