The last few weeks have been challenging for a number of students, staff and whānau who are isolating and managing Covid 19. The impact on our school roll has seen absences of over 50% of students and some staff who have also been isolating. I would like to thank our staff and students for their flexibility and understanding during these times as relievers are hard to source. Over the past few weeks, some classes have between 9 and 15 students which has enabled us to combine classes to get through the day. The advantage of doing this has enabled our normal learning programmes to continue ensuring a bit more stability for our students as well as providing our students with face to face teaching and learning utilising teachers they already know. I have enjoyed teaching a few classes for Foods this week and getting to know more of our Year 7 students along the way. We are still working in our Green Stage of our Covid Response Plan.

A big thank you to all of our whānau who have continued to maintain communication with us regarding their situation. This has made it easier to track where our students and whānau are at during this challenging time. It also saves our office admin staff time too as they are able to pre-book the leave with notes for reasons of absence.

If you are isolating and are needing support then please contact us at school so that we can see what we can do.

There is a bit of a technical glitch that we are trying to work through with Google. For some reason when you google our school it comes up saying that we are Permanently Closed. We fixed it but then it returned. So please be reassured that we are definitely not closed permanently. Thank you to the parents that have contacted us to let us know.

On Wednesday we all had to resort to the traditional way of teaching as our internet service provider had some technical issues following the storm that passed during the night. This is a reminder that if our internet is down, this means our phone lines are also down which means you will not be able to ring the school. This outage was felt across most of Titahi Bay and was restored just after 1.00 p.m.

Over the next few months, you will see a bit of building activity happening here at Titahi Bay Intermediate. The original roofing replacement project planning started back in 2019 and finally next week we will start to see some action. This may cause a few changes for our students as the builders begin to replace the roof on both blocks of classrooms which have all of our classrooms in. Some of these rooms will also have repairs to the ceiling, spouting and guttering. In the Technology area, there will be sections of the roof being replaced along with the re-nailing of sections.

The most significant change you will see will be the administration and hall appearance. All of this roof will be re-pitched as it is all flat roof which has caused leakages in the heavy rain. We will lose some windows in the hall but will have smaller and new windows installed. The office area is also being upgraded to make it safer for our staff with better work stations.

Changes will be:

• The foyer that you walk into will be turned into the Deputy Principals office
• The current Principal's office will be a Whānau meeting room
• An addition to the side of the building will house an office area for the Principal

I have added a picture of what this will look like.

When the work starts in the office we will have temporary accommodation placed at the front of the school. This will be the main office as well as the Principal's office.

We are very excited to have these changes happening over a few years of planning.

This Friday we will be having our School Photos taken. Your child should have bought home information about how to purchase photos. I have provided this information below.

If you have siblings attending Titahi Bay Intermediate and you would like sibling photo's taken then please ensure that you complete the sibling form and return to the office prior to Friday 1st April 2022.

Thank you to those who have returned your camp intention and participation and consent forms to the office. If you are yet to get your forms in please do so as soon as possible as we will need to confirm numbers by Thursday 31st March 2022. If you need another form please contact the school office. Teachers will be in contact if we have not heard from you.

Our number of students who have indicated their attendance at camp for 12th -14th April is looking good, so we will work with the camp to see if the numbers we have are viable for them.

More information will come out soon.

At the beginning of the term, a few of our students took part in the project "Through the Eye of Te Whanganui-a-tara", which is a partnered initiative between Track Zero and The Festival of Arts. The project is a nationwide, photography project for young people, focussing on climate change.

Please follow the link to view our students' amazing work and powerful stories.

https://trackzero.nz/eye-of-lens/te-whanganui-a-tara/titahi-bay-exhibition/

Due to the large number of absences and the continued risk of Covid in our community we have made the unprecedented decision to cancel our Trophy Night for this term. Student successes are still being celebrated in class and you would have been able to share in some of these during our Te Ara Korero Meetings in Week 7.

We look forward to being able to celebrate the achievements of our tamariki in person next term!

For those students who are isolating and able to engage in learning, please remember there is the online Choice Board which is updated every week and if you require a hard pack, please contact the office and we will deliver on to you. Let us know if we can support you in any way.

Remember to download our App so that you can keep up to date with what is happening.

• School Photos - Friday 1st April 2022
• Camp - final day for camp intention forms to be returnee