Back to School 2023 Pānui

In NewsPosted

Kia ora e te whānau,

Welcome back to 2023! It was so nice to connect with some of you today or over the past week in and around the place. The teachers have been working super hard to get their classroom environments looking amazing, so that your kids come tomorrow and will be stoked with their new space. Meryl, our fantastic caretaker has been doing the same thing externally ensuring that our school grounds are looking ātaahua (beautiful) as well!

Kōrero Mai/Meet the Learner:

Thank you to those of you who made the effort to book a time today to connect (or reconnect) with your child’s teacher for the year. We hope today puts yourselves and your child at ease about starting back this year and what it will look like for them. If the timing today didn’t work out and you couldn’t make it, please try to make time this week with your child’s teacher. You can reach out to them via email:

Mihi Whakatau:

Tomorrow morning we are having a Mihi Whakatau (Like a pōwhiri, but a bit more informal) to welcome our new whānau members to the school. This will happen just after 9am in the quad. All are welcome. Thanks to Cal from Te Whānau Māori who will whaikōrero (speak) on behalf of our visitors. 

Drop off/Pickup:

Just like last year, we allow you to drop your child off at school from 8am, where we ask them to sit and wait in the quad until 8.30am, where they are allowed to come and play in the playground and enter their classrooms. Children are released at 3pm where they come to the playground and wait for you to collect them. Pickups at Turitea at 3pm can be quite congested, so we advise some of you to come at 3.15pm when it is not so busy to come pick them up. I will be out on the gate supervising them until then.

School Values:

If you came to Kōrero Mai today, you should have taken home a new fridge magnet with our school values poster on it. This will be a massive body of work that we want to unpack and embrace with not only your students, but you as parents as well. We believe that these four values are important in preparing good human beings at school, but in life as well. We urge you to have conversations with your children about how they show these values and maybe give examples of how you do as adults too. 

Swimming Pool:

It has been awesome to see so many people making use of the swimming pool over Summer. Remember that our kids swim everyday at Turitea, so make sure you get them to pack their togs and towel tomorrow.

School Stationery:

As previously communicated, we enlisted the services of OfficeMax for our school stationery. You can purchase this directly from them as a pack. Each class has a slightly different pack so you can order these through the MySchool page. We are outsourcing this to them, so will not be selling it through the school.

Sports Coordinator:
We are excited to let you know that Dani Macdonald has taken on our role of Sports Coordinator. Awesomeness runs in the whānau as she is Julie’s daughter and is able to be contacted on sport@turitea.school.nz. Dani will have a segment in the weekly pānui letting you know about the up and coming sports. Just a reminder that if you have a Turitea School Sports uniform at home, please can you send it into the office so we can take stock of how many we have. 

Building Work:
Over the holidays, the inside of our fence was made more secure from internal climbing and it looks great. The last piece of our project due to be completed this week is the front entranceway. I would have loved for you to all be greeted by this as you came back to school, but the team has been short a few members unfortunately, so have been reassured it will be completed ASAP. 

Looking forward to seeing you all back at school.

Ngā Manaakitanga,

Troy

principal@turitea.school.nz