By Beth Downie | Posted: Thursday December 14, 2023
As 2023 rolls to an end, I wanted to take the opportunity to provide a short reflection on the year and some insight into the Board’s focus for 2024.
Firstly, thank you to you all for supporting Kaikorai School. Our children, whanau and family, teachers, and support staff make our school the special place that it is.
2023 has been a very busy year; the completion and opening of the admin block and library, the exit of rebuild contractors, the installation of new signage, the opening of all 4 basketball courts and the awesome painting on the courts, gardens and landscaping, and most excitedly the removal of fences and the opening of the backfield last week. Seeing the Kaik kids enjoying the grass on Friday was certainly a highlight of my year.
As a board it is genuinely exciting to see all the planning and hard work that has been undertaken over the last 10 years in relation to the rebuild come to fruition. However, there are still a number of projects underway for 2024; the Board has dedicated a significant amount of funding towards the development of additional play spaces; we are currently meeting with playground designers to look at what options are available to best suit the needs of our Tamariki. In addition to this, Room 13 is going to receive a makeover to bring it up to the same standard as the new classroom block. This includes developing a dedicated outside area behind the classroom for the juniors and some improvements to the sandpit area.
Along with all of these enhancements to our physical environment, there has been an enormous amount of learning during the year, one of the highlights for me being the recent art exhibition. We have some very talented children and teachers, and it was wonderful to see so many of our community stop in to have a look.
The Board would like to thank Beth, the leadership team and all the teaching and support staff for their dedication and hard work during the year. We wish both Felicia Ward and Anya Cockroft well in their future roles, and we look forward to welcoming Ruth Faulkner and Hannah Sims at the start of the new year.
Thank you for your continued support of Kaikorai, to all of you who have volunteered as parent help, sports team managers and coaches, on the parents groups, we thank you as without this support we would bot be able to provide the children at Kaikorai with all the opportunities they are offered.
On behalf of the Board, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year.
Katie Devereux
Presiding Chair