Kia ora koutou
This email is to provide a little more detail about some of the services at school under alert level 2 and some information about Queen’s birthday weekend. A reminder that we are expecting to greet all of our year 9 and 10 students at 8.45am on Monday 18 May and all our year 11, 12 and 13 students at 9.30am on Monday 18 May.
Payments
Under alert level 2 we won’t be handling cash payments anywhere at school. All payments should be either through the portal or by Paywave at student services.
Visitors to school
If you need to attend school for any reason, you must sign in at student services. Reception has moved to student services for the alert level 2 period.
Queen’s birthday weekend arrangements
A lot of teachers and students have been working without much of a break since the start of lockdown. A number of parents have contacted me asking for a break for their student. We have decided that we will have a longer break over the Queen’s birthday weekend – Friday 29 May will be a teacher only day and Tuesday 2 June will be a mid term break. This is in line with a number of other Wellington schools and will give students 5 days continuously away from school work and hopefully allow many of them to recharge for the remainder of the term. Please note that in our original scheduling for the year, we already had Friday 29 May marked as a teacher only day.
Extra hygiene processes
We have installed packets of paper towels as an additional drying mechanism in all toilets (in addition to electric hand dryers). We need students to look after these so that stocks are not depleted quicker than they need to be. Students should use 2 towels to dry their hands for roughly 10 seconds each, or use the hand dryer for approximately 45 seconds. We will be giving this message to students but your help in talking to your student about this would be appreciated.
Public transport
Cafeteria
Our cafeteria will be operating a cashless system using the mykindo app or through www.mykindo.co.nz. Orders can be placed through the app or website and the service is click and collect. More details can be found here. On Monday, EFTPOS machines will also be available in the cafeteria.
In addition, the cafeteria is implementing the following extra practices based on MPI guidelines:
- There will be a register which records who handled/packaged what food.
- Hand sanitiser is available at the counter for student use once they have received their food.
- Queuing for food will happen in the marked lanes. Entry is by the car park entrance, exit is by the foyer entrance. There will be no dining in this area under ale
We have had difficulty getting information from Metlink but we have been told that there will definitely be no standing allowed on any school buses and they acknowledge this means some services may overfill. They are also looking at where they can put in additional services but cannot give any guarantees of when these might be in place. I suspect their capacity is limited in this regard and this will remain a problem under alert level 2. If you have alternative modes of transport for a student who would normally catch a bus or train, then this would be a good time to ‘exercise’ that option!
A reminder to please complete the public transport survey if you haven’t done already. This can be found at: https://forms.gle/kjY4WiGJ1GTnYsNX6. We need this information for contact tracing to and from school.
Students displaying signs of cold, flu, COVID-19
If students are displaying symptoms of any of these, please keep them away from school. If students turn up to school displaying these symptoms, we will ask you to come and pick them up. If students are ill they will be able to continue with the remote learning plans that will continue under alert level 2.rt level 2, and all seating has been removed from this area.
Preparing to return to school under Alert Level 2
The Ministry of Education has compiled a list of resources to help prepare parents and students for alert level 2. These include:
- A ‘checklist’ for preparing for the return to on-site learning
- Translated versions of the information in te reo Māori and 10 Pacific languages (Note: we will be adding other language versions in the coming days).
- Some helpful videos that may help with the situation
https://parents.education.govt.nz/essential-information/news-stories/covid-19-preparing-for-alert-level-2/
Our Learning Plan under alert level 2
As I mentioned in my previous email, we will be continuing with our remote learning plan to enable some students to continue to work from home. Our expectation is that all students will return to school but we realise there will be some exceptions. Could you please ensure that your student has all the equipment they need for learning, including:
- A charged device (and their charger)
- Headphones to use with their device.
Our alert level 2 planning
You can view our COVID-19 alert level 2 planning here. This plan has been completed with close reference to Ministry of Education guidelines in Managing Health and Safety in Schools at Alert Level 2.
We are looking forward to welcoming all of our students back to school on Monday.
Mauri ora!
Dominic Killalea, Principal