Sunday 22 March 2020
Monday preparation
As you will all be aware, the government announced that New Zealand has moved to Alert Level 2 – Reduce Contact for COVID-19. Schools are to remain open at this level. With that in mind we are making plans for how to best manage our requirement to remain open.
At present we are asking for the following support from our families
- If your child can learn from home tomorrow, can you please do so. To do this please email / call the office and notify them that your child will be having an “at home learning day”.
- If someone in your house is sick, please stay home. Please contact the office and let us know that your child is sick.
If your child is attending on site tomorrow, can you please ensure the following.
- That they arrive as close to 9am as possible.
- All students will need to be have left the building by 3.30pm
- We have removed all trust licence trips. Trust licence trips include going to get lunch. You will need to provide lunch for your child. There are a couple of reasons for this. It is unlikely that there will be many places to purchase lunch in the CBD and we would prefer that your child limits their contact with those outside of the school.
- No devices or music equipment will be issued at school tomorrow. If your child needs a device / instrument they will need to bring their own.
We will make offsite learning resources available to all families as quickly as we can.
Changes to our programmes
We will no longer be taking students offsite to places like the library or Margaret Mahy. This means there will be considerable changes to our programmes for the rest of the term at all year levels. You can expect information from us tomorrow about what will happen instead. You can also expect that this may change further should the alert level change or the government makes the decision to close schools.
Students working with external providers may also find that their courses are disrupted. We will let these students and families know about this as information is shared with us from these organisations.
Reminders
There is a wealth of information in the message we put out to families on Friday that is still extremely relevant. You can read that here
To briefly summarise parts of it, we are asking the following
- Check the government site for up to date information, particularly health information. We are not medical professionals but want you to get the answers you may need at this time should you be concerned about your own or your child’s health.
- We know COVID-19 feels scary and of course people are concerned for the wellbeing of our children. Please be assured that with no case confirmed in our school, your children are safe here.
- If there was a case confirmed of someone in our school, we will likely be asked to close temporarily by the Medical Officer of Health. This will allow time for close contacts to be traced, appropriate testing to be undertaken, and a careful clean of the school to be undertaken.
- We would encourage you to have conversations with your child about the importance of handwashing and maintaining physical distance.
Newsletter
We will post this to you as soon as possible. This may be this evening but it may be tomorrow.
Future Communication
You can expect a daily update from us. Tomorrow’s update will include information about the following
- How to learn from home
- IEMs
- Trips etc
- Any further updates from external providers etc
Thank you so much for the messages of support and your understanding.
Steven Mustor – Director