Principal's Update
Wednesday 22nd April 2020
Level 3 Update
Kia ora koutou,
We hope that Term 2 and our distance learning programme has been a success for you so far. We know there will have been any number of challenges for you to deal with, but we have been getting some great feedback about the learning that is happening and thank you for all your support.
On Monday the Government decided that we will move into Alert Level 3 on Tuesday 28th April. That means we will be open to receive students from Wednesday 29th April. We will start to prepare our site from tomorrow.
The key message for you is that if you can, you should keep your child at home. You should only physically send your child to school if you need to. If your child has a health condition that means they are at a greater risk of a severe illness you must keep them at home. If your child is sick please also ensure you keep them at home.
In order to ensure the safety of those children and our staff who do come to school, we will be operating with strict enforcement of health and safety measures.
I want to assure you that we will continue to support your child’s learning at home.
Earlier this week our amazing admin team gave you a call to find out if you would be keeping your child/ren at home or if you were sending them to school because you had no other option. We now have a list of the students who will be attending school as well as a list of ‘possibles’ due to the family needing to find out more information from their employer. In the next couple of days I will be in contact with the families who will be sending their children to school during level 3 with further information about start/finish times and which ‘bubble’ they will be in.
Please note:
The Ministry of education has made a clear statement that you need to, “Please keep your child learning at home at Alert Level 3, unless there is no one in your bubble who can care for them as you now need to go to work.”
Students cannot attend school at random, therefore you need to make prior communication with the school if you have changed your mind since our admin team contacted you earlier in the week. Please also let us know if you no longer need to bring your child/ren into school as well.
The Ministry of Education has advised that they are working closely with the Ministry of Health to develop clear guidance that will support schools to safely re-open their premises to students and staff. This will help us work through the public health requirements that we all need to meet. As you will be doing, we want to be sure that what we do will keep our community as safe as possible.
For now, we will continue to support your child’s learning by distance. We will be in touch again soon with more information. As you have been doing, please keep connecting with your teachers and encouraging learning at home.
Ngå mihi nui
James Willson
Principal
Kurt Parry
BOT Chair
Matapu School
Email: admin@matapu.school.nz
Website: matapu.school.nz
Location: 495 Hastings Road, Matapu
Phone: (06) 272 6764