School Board

2021 has been another challenging year for us all.

The Covid pandemic has impacted the lives of every one of us, not least of all our tamariki (children). Over the past two years, this pandemic has had a huge impact on the education of all our students and their overall wellbeing. Unfortunately, the level of student engagement over the lockdown this year was lower than in 2020. I think a lot of this can be put down to the same Covid fatigue that we have all experienced.

I personally feel that the effects of two years of disrupted education and the impact of this on the wellbeing of our students will linger way past us returning to any sort of normality. The challenge for us all now is to support our students in trying to catch up on the last two years of missed education.

At this point I would like to acknowledge and thank Deborah, the Senior Management Team, the Admin Staff and all the Teaching and Support Staff, for the tremendous amount of time and effort that they have put in over the past year to try and meet the expectations of the Ministry, which often changed daily and sometimes hourly, the Parents and Caregivers, the community and the students. As you can imagine, at times this was a real challenge. Again, we thank you all.

At the start of the year, we started the free school lunch programme using an external provider. Although this worked well most of the time, it was decided to bring the making of the lunches in-house for 2022.

The Board, along with a small amount from the Ministry, have funded the building of a purpose-built kitchen and other facilities to make and provide free school lunch to all of our students and all the students of Te Kauwhata Primary. This is around 800 lunches a day.

We’d like to thank Jimmy Hughes, the College Property Manager and his team, for all the planning and work that has gone into constructing the kitchen.

Last year we gave notice that the College was discussing implementing an enrolment zone with the Ministry. We can inform you that this is presently with the Ministry, and we await an update on this process.

On the property side, we reported last year that the Staff Room and Administration area were due for a much-needed upgrade, along with an upgrade of the Fire and Security Alarm systems. We can report that these projects have now been completed.

The upgrade to the Student Learning Support Area hasn’t happened as yet but is now expected in 2022.

At the beginning of the year Jenny Russell joined the Board as the Staff representative.

In November the Board appointed Marlene Raumati as a co-opted member of the Board.

Because of Covid, there was no Student Representative election held. This will be addressed in the new year.

I would like to thank all the members of the Board for their efforts in supporting our school over the past year. The Board elections will be held in September 2022, and we know that some of the Board Members will be stepping down at this point.

I ask that everyone in the School Community give some consideration to standing for the Te Kauwhata College Board. The College is ours and it needs members of the local community to help Govern and support it. Are you up for the challenge?

We thank you all for your support over this past year.

 

Mike Peters

Chairperson

Te Kauwhata College Board