By Simon Clarke | Posted: Thursday May 3, 2018
Welcome back to school for Term 2!
It has been a typically busy start to the term with all classes starting to learn about the term 2 concept of "systems" and junior classes beginning their swimming programmes. You can learn more about what your child might be doing in our syndicate news section.
I am looking forward to seeing how our teachers will introduce project based learning and maker culture ideas into this terms learning. You can see what Kaikorai and the other four schools in our cluster are doing by clicking this link. https://sites.google.com/view/hills-cluster-pld/home
During the holidays, we employed John Bish who will be replacing Sarah Gilbert while she is on maternity leave from Monday 21st of May. We are very lucky to have secured someone of John's experience and talents. He has been teaching for 20 years and his last school was Ponsonby Primary School.
Fran Hall who is a familiar face for some is returning at the start of next term as we roll out our third new entrant class in Room 11.
With Sarah departing for a year it will mean we will make some changes to our administrative structure. Our Deputy Principal Robin Hartley will take over leadership of the middle syndicate.. Susan Oldfield, the Assistant Principal, will continue to lead her group of 5 soon to be 6 teachers.
We have also secured the services of Maguire and Harford who will be the lead architects in the masterplanning and preliminary design stage of the schools redevelopment. This is very exciting as the project is starting to feel very real now. More information can be found in our property update section.
I am sure you are well aware of the recent story at Massey High School and the controversy over providing an information pamphlet about Methamphetamine to a Year 13 class. I am not wanting to debate the rights and wrongs of providing the information but to highlight how this started. According to the Principal the parent posted their concerns on Facebook and then came to the school to discuss it.
Once the school clarified with the parent the whole story, the Facebook post was removed. Unfortunately by then the story had gone viral with large numbers of people expressing their opinion who knew very little about the situation.
The moral of the story here is please talk to your child's school about your concerns before posting on social media as we only ever do what we think is best for our students. We might not always agree but at least give the school a chance to provide an explanation before airing your views publicly.
Kind regards
Simon Clarke