Principal's News

Relay for Life: With the main event in Whangarei having been cancelled, we are hosting our very own Relay for Life event here at school on Friday the 8th of April. What started as a relatively small event is quickly turning into quite a major event with tug of war, 3 legged races etc, BBQ & sausage sizzle, music, raffles, a remembrance tree and coffee truck all already organised for the day. The Rapid Relief truck will also be on site. Students and staff will be involved during the day and we welcome members of our community to join us from 4pm onwards. We will finish up at 9pm. This is going to be a wonderful opportunity to raise funds and awareness for the Cancer Society. 

Staffing: We farewelled Mr Crisp on Friday 25th March. After seven years at Otamatea High School Mr Crisp is taking on the exciting challenge of HOD English at Ruawai College. We wish him all the best in his new position. We also thanked Mrs McIntosh and Mr Mackenzie last week for covering classes for the first 8 weeks of the year. Their replacements, Ms Baker, our new science teacher and Mr Trail, our new hard materials technology teacher, both started on Monday the 28th March. Mr Roux, our new mathematics teacher, has now arrived from South Africa. He will start on Monday the 4th April, taking over from Mr Weston who finishes on Friday the 1st April. We thanked Mr Weston on Friday for covering these classes for the past two months.

COVID:  Our total number of active cases has continued to fall this past week and we currently have 25 students and staff isolating at home. I'd like to thank our bus contractors Leabourn who have done such a great job keeping all our bus routes running during the past few weeks, despite high numbers of COVID cases and limited drivers available. We have also managed to run all timetabled classes thanks to teachers picking up extra cover, and to our excellent pool of relief teachers who have been in most days. You may have heard that the Public Health Response Order on Vaccinations for the Education Sector has now been lifted. 
The key changes to the COVID-19 Protection Framework impacting schools are:

• removal of My Vaccine Pass from the framework effective from 11.59pm Monday 4 April;
and from 11.59pm last Friday 25 March:
• removal of any outdoor capacity limits at all colours of the framework
• increased capacity limits when indoors at Red, moving from 100 to 200 (but still allowing for one-metre spacing) and no capacity limits indoors at Orange and Green
• no requirement to display QR codes at any setting (but be ready to use them again in the future)
• no need to have alternate check-in systems for COVID-19 beyond our usual visitor register processes
• no mask requirements when outdoors (but masks remain a requirement indoors for staff and children/students in Years 4-13 when at Red, and on the school buses), additionally, masks are strongly encouraged to be worn at Orange.

As mentioned last week visitors to school no longer need to scan in using the COVID QR scanner, and from the 5th April the vaccine mandate for the education sector will no longer apply. Staff, volunteers and coaches etc who work with our students will no longer be asked to provide evidence of their vaccination status. Mask wearing when indoors is still required so please remind your children to continue wearing their masks when on the school buses, and when indoors at school. 

Parent Teacher Interviews: Please note in your calendars that we have moved our term 1 parent teacher interviews afternoon to the 4th of May – the first Wednesday of next term. School will close early with buses running at 12.30pm. I expect turnout to be much higher and teachers will have had the opportunity to do a stocktake on students’ progress, given the considerable amount of schooling some students have missed in term 1. All parents are encouraged to attend. The online booking app will open at 10am Monday 4th of April, closing at 12pm on Tuesday 3rd May. To book appointments parents/caregivers should log on to www.schoolinterviews.co.nz  using the event code ar666. Those families who do not have internet access are encouraged to ring the school office and we will make the bookings for you.

Triathlon: The 2022 School Triathlon was held on Wednesday. The day started off foggy but the sun soon broke through bringing a lovely sunny and windless
day – perfect for the triathlon. This year the cycle section was held on the Maungaturoto Country Club grounds using part of the walkway track. It was great to see all students giving their full commitment and cheering each other on at the finish line. A huge thanks to Tina Holst and the PE crew for organising the day, and to all the students, staff and community individuals who helped with the set up and marshalling.  To view event results and photos visit our website https://www.otamatea.school.nz/latest-news/2022-OHS-Triathlon

Board Policies and Procedures: Parents and whānau can access all board policies and procedures through our website, or directly at https://otamatea.schooldocs.co.nz/  Anyone in our school community can access and review our policies and procedures, making our review systems more inclusive and allowing for a greater range of expertise and opinion to be shared. It also increases everyone’s awareness of our school’s policies and procedures. Our community username and password to access our policies is otamatea, and the password is bickerstaffe. 

Ngā mihi
Dirk Smyth