Newsletter Term 4 27 November 2019

From the Principal

Week 7 of Term 4 and only 19 sleeps or thereabouts till the end of term. It is flying by. Your children have finished all their assessments now, and teachers are busy writing reports. Wish me luck in reading all 127 of them and adding my comment. Glad I wear glasses! As you may also realise we are looking at organising classes for 2020 as well. PLEASE if your child or children are NOT returning to Tomarata School next year can you let the office know? It helps with class sizes and organisation.

As I mentioned in my last newsletter we will be welcoming Janet Ashe to our staff next year. Janet will be flatting with Ms Sibtsen until she can find a place to rent. If you think you may have a place available please send details to janet@tomarata.school.nz. It will be much appreciated.

You may have noticed that our lovely wooden Tomarata sign by the road looks like it has been eaten by termites, beavers or some other  voracious animal. We have been gifted some gorgeous macrocarpa logs to replace it. However our awesome caretaker Allan does not have a router (??? man shed word) in his box of tricks. We would like it to look the same, but need someone with that type of equipment to “carve” out the school name in the wood for us. Could that be you???

Our amazing Board of Trustees with the help of Jill Corkin have been rewriting the school policies and these now can be viewed online in the public BOT folder on GOOGLE DOCS. The policies are:

4.1 Financial Management Policy
– 5.1 Risk Management Policy
– 5.1.2 Attendance Concerns Procedure
There will also be hard copies in a blue folder in the school office, and they will be uploaded to the website shortly. All of our policies will eventually be stored in these 3 areas as they are updated. We are going to be visited by the ERO review team sometime in Term 1 2020. The Board Chair and I had a very informative session with them last week, and will let you know of further information in due course.

If you pop your head into the Rata Room you will see a pool table! We have been gifted that by a generous family, and it will provide hours of fun for our students next year. I know that I promised to let you know what the final figure raised was from the Guy Fawkes night, but have yet to receive it from our Helping Hands group. I do know that it exceeded last year’s figure by at least double! Come on ladies- don’t keep us hanging!

Room 1 and 2 had a fabulous trip to the Auckland Museum yesterday. There were very tired but happy children and parents offloading from the bus. Thank you to Mrs Bartlett and Miss McGuiness for organising this event.

A big thank you to the helpers on our trip. Thank you for your positive feedback. It was an amazing day enjoyed by all. We have tallied up our costs and with the fantastic support from the cake stall we will refund $5 which has been credited to accounts. Please see Vicki if you would like this changed.

We also have the Rodney Rural Athletics day on Friday so make sure to pack extra water, a hat and sunscreen in bags for that. Our Year 8 leavers have been having an exciting few days with Matua Chris and this will carry on next week. Chris Rhodes is on our Board of Trustees and has also just graduated as a trained teacher ( CONGRATULATIONS!). He is helping the children to rebuild and design something special as a community project so watch this space. Jason Kerrisk from the Board is also helping. We are so lucky to have such active and interested Board members who care so deeply for the school and your children. Not many schools have that. We have also been very privileged to have been given the gift of kaitiaki ( guardianship) of a pristine piece of bush on Earle Barnes’s farm. The Year 8’s with Chris are working on something special for next year there too.

NOW… have you earmarked the 17/18 of February for our re-visioning and revaluing day in your 2020 calendars yet? Please do…you don’t want to miss it-it’s going to be wild! We will have a creche available if you need someone to watch your children on the 17th. Plus there will be a barbecue to end that first day. Please come…. we really do need your input, views and ideas of what you feel is important for your children to learn about for our local curriculum.

Well it’s 7:45 pm and I really should go home. My husband says he has to look at a photo these days to remember what I look like. I said sorry but you have to share me with Tomarata School at the moment. Luckily he understands and knows how important it is to me to make this school the best it can be. So till next week-beam me up Scotty ( sigh I wish).

Accomplishments

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Congratulations

Willow and Arya Mitchell who competed in the Whangarei Atheletics Ribbon Day on Saturday 23rd November for the Wellsford Atheletics Club.

Willow finished 1st in the 60m,100m,200m and discus and 2nd in Long Jump

Arya finished 1st in Shotput, 60m and 2nd in Long Jump and 3rd in 100m.

CoL

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Reminders

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Helping Hands

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Community Notices

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We would like to thank Bayleys Wellsford for their sponsorship