Kaurihohore School Week Nine, Term One 2024
Manaaki te katoa - be kind to all.
Respect - Empathy - Kindness
He aroha whakatō, he aroha ka puta mai
“If kindness is sown, then kindness is what you shall receive”
Kia ora e te whānau,
I hope you managed to have a lovely Easter break with your whānau. We certainly had some lovely weather.
Thank you for taking the time to read this newsletter.
I noted in my last newsletter that we had noticed a decline in the level of respect around the school. It is pleasing to tell you this has improved greatly, we appreciate any support you gave us in the way of conversations at home.
It is great to see most children now wearing the correct hat reliably, or being in the correct
spot if they do not have one.
This term, caps must stay at home, however in Term 2 and 3, caps are allowed to be worn to school.
One area we are still noticing that children are having difficulties is around the bikes. Our
oldest children are not reliably wearing their helmets and if they bring their own bike, they often think they get to choose if they wear their helmet. Accidents can and do happen, and it is vital that children wear a helmet. If you could have conversations at home around the wearing of helmets and ensure that children also wear them at home, we would appreciate that.
Let’s have a great end to our term!
Leslee Allen
Attendance
We generally have great attendance at our school and I thank you all for getting your children to school regularly when they are not sick.
Many of our neuro-diverse children have flexible attendance agreements with us to support their needs and this works well too. If you are a parent of a ND child with these flexible attendance agreements, please ignore the blurb below.
We do however have a few children I am concerned about. One or two days off a week may seem like nothing, but let’s look at it when it is added up in the scheme of things.
This term we will have had 46 full days at school.
If a child has a day off a week, that is 10 days in total, so means they have only attended 36 of those days. They have in essence had two full weeks off.
If they have an average of two days off a week, they have then had 20 days off in total, which means they have had four full weeks off and only attended 26 full days of the term, This means they have basically had a half a term off.
I am not sure how that would go down in the workplace, but I am pretty sure it would be frowned upon. While school is obviously not a ‘job’ , attending school regularly does set children up with good habits for the future.
Poor attendance does not only impact learning, it impacts social wellbeing. Friendships are very hard to make and keep if they are frequently away. If children can not rely on them to be there, they will make new friends.
This then becomes a vicious cycle, children won’t want to come to school if they are not happy and if they are not attending regularly it is hard to be happy because they lack a sense of belonging.
Not only that, teachers find it really hard to catch your child up with learning and assessments, it puts pressure on us when children have regular days off.
We are currently reviewing attendance levels for all of our children and will be sending you attendance letters if we are concerned.
Awards Assembly- 12th April
We will be holding this on the last day at 2.20pm out under the canopy. At this assembly teachers will hand out recognition certificates and class good citizen certificates. I will also announce who the children have selected as their overall citizen.
Behaviour Support
I just wanted to do a quick blurb to help you understand how we get extra monetary resourcing to assist our children with extra needs.
Basically if we feel a child needs some extra support from an adult, Tanya our LSC needs to fill in some forms and submit these to the MOE simply to get a ‘case’ opened. This form can not go in without your permission, so she will make time to meet with you to discuss this. Giving permission for this, does in no way indicate that support will be forthcoming and it is not any sort of label either. It is simply giving us permission to seek the support we need to help your child be successful at school. Alongside this we are likely to do a referral to the RTLB, again, this needs your permission, we rely on you giving this permission, so the teacher can get the support they need to help your child.
After the case has been opened (which is not always quick) we can then make an application for some funding to help with any challenging behaviour. Again this is to support your child to be as successful as possible. Behaviour has to be seen as a risk to self or others, to get any funding. If we are lucky to get funding, the maximum we will get is equivalent to two hours a day. This is paid at a rate lower than what our current teacher aides are on, so we then make up the difference in hourly rate, as well as paying the full rate for the rest of the hours. This means the hours your child receives, are added onto hours that others may receive to help us pay our teacher aide to support them. The real kicker is that we have to apply for this support every term as it is only approved term by term. Once a child is successful because of the wonderful support we have managed to put in place, this funding is then unable to be accessed and it leaves us, having to ensure we can keep this support in place, without external funding.
If you are approached to give your permission for RTLB or Ministry referral for your child, please know we do not do this lightly and it is an indication we really need support. It is often a lot easier for us to access support if a child has been referred via ECE, again this takes your permission, so if you have concerns about your preschooler, consider talking to your ECE.
Our school is very well known for the processes we put in place to help all children, but we are not superhuman and we can not do it without you. We work really hard to make this a place where everyone can flourish, but it is not an easy job by any means.
Fundraising Term One
All our fundraising this year goes to help cover the deficit budget we have set.
Why set a deficit budget?
Well, it is certainly not our preferred option, but children coming into school have ever increasing needs. Our neuro-diverse children, children with learning needs, children with emotional and wellbeing needs, all deserve the support they need to succeed.
This year the deficit is also higher, because of our lower roll following a large group of Year 6 children leaving.
Sadly, as you may have read above, the ministry does not fund learning support to an acceptable level. We choose to staff this with our fabulous teacher aides and provide spaces like Te Kōhanga to enable this success. Without this commitment from our board, this support would not be possible.
It therefore falls on us to generate that money, necessary to make this support possible.
So far this term we have raised $3489 via the Easter raffle (massive thank you to Dianne for her efforts here) and $614.45 selling bulbs. We raised $237 from ice block sales at the beach. We are also very appreciative of receiving donations from our parent community. These are absolutely not expected, but very much appreciated. If you do give donations a big portion can be claimed back via the IRD as a tax rebate, you can claim back a third as a tax rebate through IRD, so a $100 donation in effect only costs $67.
We are very grateful for your support so far this term towards our fundraisers and understanding what they are so necessary. We still have our last fundraiser to go this term, which is our Sausage sizzle. You can order via KINDO, this is happening on the 12th, which is the last day of term and orders need to be in by the 7th of April.
All of this taken into account we should raise just over $7000 this term, which puts us in a good place. With $35 000 as a minimum to raise to cover learning support as detailed above we will be left with around $28 000 to raise.
Term Two Fundraising
Next term our big fundraisers will be chocolate selling (which went really well last year) and our sponsored colour run, which again, was a lot of fun.
If you have ideas for fundraisers, or would like to assist in some way, we always appreciate help.
Enrolments
We still have a few positions across the school for out of zone children, at the moment we have one position for a year 3, one position for a year 4 and 2 positions for a Year 5. If you know of anyone looking to enrol, ask them to email Chelsea.
kaurienrolments@gmail.com and come for a look around. If they have children who are out of zone at other year levels, it is still worth contacting Chelsea and coming in for a visit in case we have a position come up.
If you know of any families who live in the zone, or may be moving into the zone, please encourage them to contact us as early as possible, so we can calculate them into our numbers.
Contacting Us
You can find all staff emails on our blog page under the tab ‘our staff,’ however the best way to contact your child’s teacher is via seesaw message. Teachers will endeavour to answer when they have time during the day, however please don’t expect replies to messages or emails after 5pm. We will respond the next day as soon as we can. Please refrain from using Facebook messenger, or our personal phone numbers to contact us.
Our school blog is kaurihohoreschool.blogspot.com
Office emails are:
Chrissie - admin@kaurihohoreschool.co.nz
Dianne - reception@kaurihohoreschool.co.nz
Chelsea/Enrolments - kaurienrolments@gmail.com
Leslee - principal@kaurihohoreschool.co.nz
Reporting Absence - kauriabsences@gmail.com
If you have questions or concerns, please direct these to your child’s teacher as soon as you can, so we can nip anything in the bud before it becomes a bigger issue.
KINDO
Kindo is an app that allows online payments for items at school like pizza days etc. If you go to the links below to either create an account, or log in. These links are also at the top of our school blog site.
Create and account.
https://shop.tgcl.co.nz/shop/flow_join.shtml
Log in
https://shop.tgcl.co.nz/shop/index.html
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Known Term Dates
12th of April - Last day of Term 1
29th of April - First day of Term 2
15th of May - Science Roadshow Year 7 and 8
28th of May - Whole school music man show ($4 per child)
31st of May - Teachers only day (school closed to children)
3rd of June - King's Birthday (school closed)
19th of June - Sponsored Colour Run
5th of July - Last day of Term 2
22nd of July - First day of Term 3
27th of September - Last day of Term 3
14th of October - First day of Term 4
18th of December - Last day of Term 4
Tentative First Day Back 2025 - Monday 3rd of February
School Bank Account Details -
All payments now go through the one account.
Account 12-3093-0200709-00
Kaurihohore school board of Trustees
Food for thought…
Thank you for all of your ongoing support.
