Board of Trustees Meeting Summary

10 November 2021 Awatere Room 7-9pm

Today, the Board received Simon Green’s verbal resignation and are looking to coopt another Board member until the next election. The next election round is in September 2022. We would like to thank Simon for his support for the duration of his time on the Board.

Next on the agenda was a look into how ‘The Arts’ have been integrated in the school curriculum over a 5 year period. ‘The Arts’ includes drama, music, visual art and dance. We were reminded of some fantastic activities and experiences our tamariki have been exposed to. We are very fortunate to have access to the dance, music, and drama programmes either in the region or brought here by other professionals, and extremely lucky to have a skillful and talented community to also support our children in their artistic learning.

Adam also shared information on the Maths progress of target students. Despite another challenging year, our teachers and tamariki have been rising to the challenge and are well positioned to finish the year strong.

With the year quickly coming to a close, we need to start looking at the year ahead. The new school year starts 1 February 2022, however there will be an NZEI day 1 February, Setting up for Success Meetings on 2 February, and children officially starting back Thursday 3 February. There will be another NZEI day taken later in the year, but this date has yet to be decided.

We looked over the school’s budget for 2022. The school is looking like it’s in a good position and it was moved by Tracy that we accept the 2022 Budget and seconded by Fliss. We also had a review of the Strategic Plan and Annual Goals for 2021, the challenges and successes the school faced, and what we can do with the learning from those. This will then advise the Annual Goals for 2022, which can be found in the School Charter.

A regular part of our Board responsibilities is to review the School Policies on School Docs to ensure they remain applicable. These can be found on the Whitney Street School Docs page and the details are below. This meeting we reviewed the Harassment Policy and the Maori Educational Success Policy.

For the past few months, we have been having discussions and meetings with the MoE and surrounding schools to discuss the Marlborough District School Zones. This is still in progress and when, or if any concrete changes are to occur, the Board will keep families up to date.

Finally, the Board discussed how we can acknowledge and appreciate the hard work of our teachers and support staff throughout the year. This year has been one of uncertainty and many changes, and the teachers and support staff have risen to the challenge and helped create a safe and settled environment for our tamariki to continue learning. We are very grateful.

The final Board Meeting for the year will be held on 8 December. We hope you enjoy Term 4, and the wind down towards Christmas and a well-deserved break.

Kate McEntee

Presiding Member

A casual vacancy has occurred on the school board for an elected parent representative. The board has decided to fill the vacancy by selection. If 10% or more of eligible voters on the school roll ask the board, within 28 days of this notice being published, to hold a by-election to fill the vacancy, then a by-election will be held. Request for a by-election should be emailed to: Kate McEntee, Presiding Member (Chair), Whitney Street School Board, kjbeaver@gmail.com by 21 December 2021.

The access to period products initiative aims to provide free period products to children and young people in all state and state-integrated schools and kura across New Zealand during 2021.

If your Whitney Street School daughter has her period, she is eligible for two packs of free period products per month. These will be available to her by her parent/caregivers letting Christee Dalzell know via email (dalzell@whitneystreet.school.nz) or by leaving a wee note on her desk :-)

Hopefully this initiative is utilised really well by our Whitney kōtiro/girls! It is a brilliant way to save money on the grocery bill.

If you have any questions, please feel free to pop in and talk to Christee.

Life Education Trust NZ have partnered with the kind folk at The Good Sell NZ from now until the 6th December to raise $20,000 to reach tamariki around the country with our Healthy Harold programme, teaching children important knowledge and strategies to grow their well-being and make positive choices now and in the future. The Good Sell is an online marketplace, where you can shop online and support the efforts of Life Education Trust. Think of it as a massive crowd-funding garage sale, where the proceeds go to a good cause.

How can you help support the campaign to reach Life Education Trust’s goal of $20,000 nationwide? Jump onto www.goodsell.co.nz and list an item for sale (donating some of the proceeds to Life Education Trust) or make a bid on some of our great items or experiences up for sale! It’s that easy!

Here’s a list of items and products for sale with donations going to Life Education Trust Marlborough;

• 3-night stay at Tahuna Beach Holiday Park and Motel
• Family Day Pass to Lochmara Lodge
• Gramado's Restaurant And Bar Dinner Voucher
• Signed Tasman Makos Jersey
• JBL Black Wireless Headphones donated by Noel Leemings Blenheim
• $50 Mitre 10 Gift Voucher
• Anxious Allie Children's Book

You can see all the items for Life Education Trust here with more being added over the next few weeks!

If you are interested in donating an experience or item and not sure how to navigate the online platform, please get in touch with Dayna at admin.marlborough@lifeedtrust.org.nz and she can help!

We would like to thank all the incredible local businesses who have got behind us to support this campaign and help us continue to support tamariki and rangatahi to make positive choices!

Life Education Trust Marlborough are excited to announce our third event in our Whanau Whanaungatanga Workshop Series - UNDERSTANDING MENTAL HEALTH IN CHILDREN on Wednesday 24th November, 7pm - 9pm.

This is a FREE online event for educators and caregivers, creating a conversation around children in our community and how they are impacted by mental health and what we can do to support them, especially during these uncertain times.

Educators and caregivers play an enormous role in supporting tamariki and rangatahi with anxiety and wellbeing, so we have pulled together four expert panel guests to join the conversation around mental health and children;

• Goldie Hamilton - Anxiety NZ National Manager
• Aaron Vercoe - Redwoodtown School Principal
• George Glover - Youth Advocate
• Liz McKay - Creative Kids Director

Each of our panel guests have a wealth of knowledge and experience in mental health and tamariki, with the purpose of this event to open a discussion and give caregivers and educators an avenue to ask questions to our expert panel with the hope to better equip and support our tamariki and community with the right skills to create mentally healthy children.

REGISTER FOR EVENT

Elements nature based play: Are you looking to give your children an active & creative experience over the summer holidays? Let’s be out amongst nature. Think huts, ropes, trees, water play, tools, arts n crafts. Time and space to be a kid! Elements is offering ‘Going Wild Xmas (sold out), ‘Barefoot n Buckets’ (Wed 19 to Fri 21 Jan), and ‘Kiwi Summer’ (Wed 26 to Fri 28 Jan). 9am-3pm $60 per day incl afternoon tea.

See our website https://www.elementsnature.co.nz/ or facebook page https://www.facebook.com/elementsprogrammes/ to see what we get up to. Bookings are through https://elements.aimyplus.com .

For more info email elementsprogrammes@gmail.com.