Letter to Parents

With yesterday’s announcement by Government, we are implementing with urgency our plan to support your child’s learning from home. We appreciate this is a sudden and significant change, and will be heavily disruptive to many people in our community.
 
For children of essential workers, we look forward to seeing your child here at school this morning. You may wish to check if you are considered an essential worker – https://covid19.govt.nz/government-actions/covid-19-alert-system/  however those roles include doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and police. We continue to ask that children who are not well, do not attend school.
 
For all other children, we will be supporting their learning from your home in the following ways:

• through online learning…
• Students here yesterday went home with some work
• Teachers wll engage with children through the online on our learning page and through videos uploaded onto the blogs. 
• parents can contact their child’s teacher through email. 

 
If you need to have your child cared for by someone else you will need to identify that person or people as part of your self-isolated group. This will need to be done by midnight Wednesday and the group must remain the same for the whole 4 week period. The caregiver’s own group (eg, their partner and children), your child and your own group (eg, your parents and other children) become one group. This group needs to be limited to minimise any risk of spread and should be no more than 20 people.
 
Your child will be looking to you for guidance about this decision. Parents, caregivers, whānau and teachers will have a particularly important part to play in reassuring children at this time. If you haven’t already done so, you may wish to read the information put together by the Ministry of Education to support your conversations with your children – Talking to children about COVID-19
 
As noted by the Prime Minister these restrictions are our best chance to slow the virus in New Zealand and to save lives. We all have a clear role here to slow the spread of COVID-19.
 
We will continue to communicate with you over the coming days. Thank you for your ongoing support of our school staff and school community. Our regional staff will be in touch with you soon to determine how we can best support you.
 
Ngā mihi