Community Breakfast - Friday 16 April

Our first Community Breakfast is being held on the last day of term, Friday 16 April. If you are new to the school it is a great opportunity to meet other families in a relaxed atmosphere. See details further in the newsletter.

Preschool Enrolments

We are asking for our Whitney families, with children who are aged under 5, to take the time to check with the office that they are pre-enrolled at school. This allows us to plan the classes more effectively and to ensure that we have spaces available.

Free Healthy School Lunches

Many thanks to those of you who have taken the time to confirm participation in our free Healthy School Lunches programme that is hopefully starting up in Term 2. All children will be given a lunch (unless you choose to opt out of the programme), however you will still need to supply brain snack and morning tea. At this stage our intended suppliers are Pita Pit, Subway and Libelle, although they are still to be confirmed.

It is important that we collect all of the information regarding allergies and intolerances by Monday 29 March. If you haven’t had a chance to complete it yet, please follow the link here.

School Sweatshirts/Polar Fleece

With the weather being cooler in the mornings and hotter during the days, sweatshirts are being misplaced as the children take them off. We encourage students as much as possible to respect their belongings and put their sweatshirts in their bags when they take them off. However this doesn’t always happen and often sweatshirts are left on the field, playground, etc. Children then sometimes pick up the wrong sweatshirt and take it home by mistake, as they are not clearly named.

To ensure easy identification of your child’s sweatshirt we recommend naming it in more than one place e.g. the two tabs (one by the collar, and one on the inside seam), as well as in vivid in large letters on the inside of the sweatshirt. The office has vivids you can use, or ask your child to take their sweatshirt to their teacher for labelling if necessary.

Please also check your child(ren)’s sweatshirt to see they have the correct one, and haven’t mistakenly brought someone else’s home. Thank you.

BOT News

As always, the full meeting minutes of each Board of Trustees meeting can be found in the Board folder in the school office and on our school website. The Board meets twice a term at 7pm and anyone is welcome to attend with meetings ending at 9pm. After each meeting one member of the Board of Trustees will update the school via the newsletter and website, with a brief summary of these meetings.

PSG News

Last week we held our first PSG meeting of the year. A warm welcome to our new parents who turned up and offered to join the school fundraising group! We discussed how the PSG intends to help the school in a variety of ways this year including providing funds for updating the playground, native gardens around the school, more scooter racks, and the astro turf. The next meeting will be an Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Wednesday 5 May at 6pm, in Room 1. We would love to see you there.

Ngā mihi nui (warm greetings to you all).

Enjoy the rest of the week.

The Whitney Street School Staff

Our portraits tie in to Taha Wairua - our spiritual well-being.