Kia ora koutou.
I hope you all enjoyed the long weekend.
I’m sure you are as disappointed as we are that school hasn’t been able to re-open yet. Things do seem to be moving in the right direction, this week we have been able to open for small groups of our Year 11+ students. It’s been great to see our young people back in school, however, at this point school needs to look a little different. Staff are following the guidance provided by the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health. Chris Hipkins announced today that Primary aged students might be able to return to school mid-November, we will communicate further details as we get them and when we have a plan. At this point we aren’t sure what we will be able to do regarding our end of year assemblies, we will need to continue to review the alert levels and guidance for schools.
Vaccination is heavily focused on within the media, and we’ve had lots of questions from parents regarding the vaccination status of our staff team. Although we are unable to disclose personal information about staff, we are obliged to follow the vaccination mandate for all education staff. This will mean that all staff must have received their first vaccination by 15th November and second by 1st January, at the latest. In addition, all staff returning to school physically during Alert Level 3 are required to provide a negative COVID-19 test. If a staff member isn’t yet fully vaccinated, they are required to be tested on a weekly basis. I would like to thank the team who are currently back in school. These members of staff responded very quickly at the end of last week and kept the testing stations busy over the weekend!
It appears that COVID-19 is going to be part of our lives for quite a while to come and we are going to need to become used to living with it. Thank you to all parents who have sent Lizz Sadler appointment dates and proof of vaccination. This is helping us to put together our vaccination register. If your young person is over the age of 12 and you haven’t contacted Lizz yet, please do so. The Ministry of Health would require this register from us, if we had a case linked to the school. If we do have a case in school, we will need to follow direction from the Ministry of Health, this would involve providing contact tracing information for students and staff, closing for a period of time and initiating deep cleaning. The period of time we would need to close for will be set depending on the number of cases and the vaccination levels of our students and staff.
As per our last newsletter, we welcomed Ben Crosby and Sudha Packirisamy at the start of this term, this week we also welcomed Helen Meyrick. I know these new faces have already been joining Zoom calls and are working towards getting to know everyone.
Sadly, we will be saying goodbye to Susie Mole (Speech Language Therapist) and Jenni Verity (Teacher) at the end of the year. Both have invested significant time into Wilson School, Susie 21 years and Jenni over 13 years. Their passion and dedication in supporting our students is exceptional and they will be greatly missed. Jenni has been instrumental in developing our Transition provision at Glenfield College, she has built up a wealth of connections between the school and the local community. These have supported our students with valuable opportunities for work and leisure experiences. As our Speech Language Therapist, Susie has worked across the school, both directly and indirectly with so many of our students. Her passion for communication and experience with a range of communication methods has benefitted so many. We wish them well with their move, the South Island is very lucky to have them. Susie will be working alongside Sudha this term for a substantial handover.
We will also be saying goodbye to Alicia Gilchrist, Emily Botes and Angela Robinson, Emily and Angela are moving onto new roles and Alicia is going to be re-locating to Palmerston North. We wish them well and look forward to working with them until the end of the year.
After 34 years of dedication to Wilson School, our Deputy Principal Rosemary Jenkins, has decided to step down from her position. Rosemary has been one of the rocks that has helped to build Wilson School into what is it today. She was also amazing and supported me into the Principal position last year. She worked for the school long before it moved into the Base School we have today and has navigated her way through numerous changes to the education system. We are hoping that Rosemary stays in touch and continues her relationship with Wilson and we will be working with her to see what this could look like. We are already well into the recruitment process to find our next Deputy Principal, whoever that person might be, they will have some big shoes to fill.
We were due to have an Accord Day / Staff Only Day Friday 26th November. Due to the recent levels of disruption, we have now moved this to the end of the year. The last day for students will now be 13th December 2021.
I’m hoping to be able to see everyone back in school soon!
Kia Kaha
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