7 September 2021 - Move to AL2 and students returning to school
Firstly I apologise for the delay in getting this letter out to the community, but the public health advice and conditions for schools operating under Alert Level 2 have been very slow coming through and was not received until 3.30 pm today. It was important that we were able to share the correct information with our school community.
With the notification yesterday afternoon that we will be moving to Alert Level 2 from midnight tonight, the school will be preparing tomorrow for the return of all students to school on Thursday the 9th of September. We will continue to support whanau that have required childcare during alert level 3 on Wednesday, but additional requests for support will not be considered.
I know many will be looking forward to returning while for some this will come with some worry and anxiety. Although the South Island has managed to keep the virus at a distance, the reality is that it is impossible to 100% protect against something we can not see and we must remain vigilant as a school and community.
As a school, we have maintained many of the procedures implemented under the previous AL2, and on returning we will increase vigilance around personal hygiene, hand sanitising, hand washing and staying home if unwell. We will put a hold on larger gatherings at the school, especially those involving invited guests, parents and members of the public. The expectations have increased for us under the Delta Alert Level 2 and although this might not look that different for us at school, it certainly will for those coming into school.
Face Coverings/Masks There has been a lot of discussion around the mandating of the wearing of masks in schools and at this stage, the public health order has made it clear that it is not compulsory. There are clear arguments for and against the use of masks in school and our expectations are based on the public health order.
Face coverings are not mandatory in schools, although they are recommended for children over the age of 12. This includes on buses.
Individuals will be encouraged to do what makes them feel safe and will be supported to do so.
Is not mandated but if worn, the correct procedures in the hygiene and use of masks are essential.
When taking students off-site it may be necessary to provide masks to ensure H&S requirements are met.
If individuals wish to wear masks, it is the responsibility of the home to provide these.
External visitors to the school will be requested to wear masks if meeting with staff or students. This will include parents, Mana Ake and other outside providers.
Buses Buses will run as normal from Thursday morning.
Flu-like/C19 Symptoms If your child has flu-like/C19 symptoms they must not attend school. If children present with flu-like symptoms they will be taken to the sickbay and parents will be rung. If you have flu-like/C19 symptoms, do not come to school and you must seek out a covid test. If your child suffers from hayfever and due to this has symptoms similar to the flu, please communicate with the school about how we can best manage this.
Coming Onsite at School Please drop off and pick up at the gate. All visitors will need to make an appointment before coming onsite. If coming onsite, we encourage you to wear a facemask, use the Covid TracerApp and report to the office, be signed in and agree to AL2 H&S.
Return of devices and Learning Materials Can families please ensure that all devices and learning materials that were distributed to students are returned to school on Thursday.
Drink Bottles Drinking fountains will be closed under AL2. Students will need to bring a personal drink bottle to school.
All children and young people can continue to attend school for learning at Alert Level 2. Schools are safe to open onsite at Alert Level 2 to all learners. But we do need to play it safe and continue to take sensible and consistent health and safety precautions.
We look forward to having your children back at school on Thursday.
If you have any questions please feel free to get in touch.
At Alert Level 3, you legally must stay within your household bubble unless for essential personal movement including going to work and going to school. As the Prime Minister noted on Friday, schools are essentially closed at Alert Level 3 with the exception of those few children whose parents and carers must go to work at Alert Level 3, and there is no appropriate caregiver at home. Year 11 – 13 students are legally required to stay learning from home.
So we will be open on Wednesday, for a small number of children who need to attend. As you imagine it will not be school as we know it under Alert Level 2 or 1. All our usual safety precautions for Alert Level 3 will be in place which include following all the recommendations from the public health experts. This means we will regularly clean and disinfect high touch surfaces, encourage everyone to frequently wash their hands and cover their coughs and sneezes, and keep everyone physically distanced from others as much as possible (1 metre inside and two metres outside). We will also keep school bubbles to no more than 10 students. These bubbles will not mix with other bubbles. Students at school will essentially be doing Learning at Home from school.
Our contact tracing systems will be in place, which includes our attendance register and visitor register, and we will be limiting staff onsite with the majority of our team working from home.
We will continue to support all children who remain learning from home, through our learning from home programmes.
While we know how difficult it is trying to work from home as well as support your child’s learning, we thank the vast majority of you who have been able to keep your children in the home. For those of you with no other option, we will look forward to seeing your child at school next week. If your circumstance does change please get in contact so arrangements can be made.
Fingers crossed we are all back on site in the coming weeks and we look forward to school and life returning to some normality.
Ngā mihi nui,
Stephen Beck Principal - Tumuaki Hurunui College sb@hurunuicollege.school.nz
23 August 2021 - Remaining at Alert Level 4
Kia ora koutou,
I think we had all anticipated a further extension of Alert Level 4, and the Prime Minister confirmed this yesterday. The Alert Level will be reviewed on Friday afternoon, but for now, Alert Level 4 will remain in place until 12:59pm Friday 27 August. We are still preparing for a possible alert level change for next week and thank all whānau for their cooperation so far. There are a small number of students that may need to be onsite under AL3 and we are putting contingencies in place to manage this.
And so our learning from home programme continues! It was fantastic that we were able to get devices and hard materials out to our families over Sunday and Monday, but we are already aware that there are additional needs and we are working to see how this can best be managed.
Here are some simple guidelines that you may want to consider as parents..
Plan what the day will look like. Sit down with your child or children and work out what you will be doing together and what they will be doing alone.
Designate a space where the learning can happen; this may be a corner of the lounge, kitchen/dining area or garage. Try to avoid using the bedroom. For some of our older students, they may have a desk in their room. If bedrooms are being used, keep the door open and check in regularly on how things are going.
Develop a routine and discuss what works best for you and your family when planning learning. Remember, learning doesn’t only happen between 9am – 3pm.
Learning happens best in the morning, develop agreed wake up and going to bedtimes. For our Y8-13 students, it will be expected that they follow their timetable. Lessons start at 8.45am.
Also with devices now being distributed and more widely used in the home it is essential that parents/caregivers manage these with care and take reasonable precautions.
Keep devices out of bedrooms and in an open, common area of the house where direct and indirect supervision can be maintained.
Check what your children are doing on the computer and take the time to understand what sites they are visiting and who they are talking with.
Some social media sites have age restrictions to join, check these before letting your child use them or join.
Make sure your children know to report any activity they don’t feel comfortable with to you straight away.
Discuss internet safety with children of all ages and agree with them on what they can do online including sites to visit and appropriate behaviours.
Monitor your child’s time on their device. It’s important to take regular breaks, get outside for some fresh air and do some physical activity.
In addition, please only do what you can manage as a family. For our younger students, we do not expect them to be working at their learning all day. For our older students, there is increased expectation that they will self manage their learning. Here is a bit of a guide...
Discovery Learning Community - Whero, kakariki and Waiporoporo Classes - Desired learning time will be between 1-1.5 hours per day.
Exploring Learning Community - Kowhai, Kikorangi and Karaka classes - Desired engagement time will be between 1.5 - 2.5 hours per day
Investigating Learning Community - Years 8-10 - Desired engagement time will be between 3 - 4 hours per day.
Aspiring Learning Community - Years 11 + - Desired engagement time will be between 4 - 5 hours per day.
Limited access can now be granted for the collecting of learning material from school, however, this needs to be managed and we ask that the Covid Tracer App is used. Please use your child's homeroom or Ako teacher as the initial point of contact to arrange this or alternatively any problems with computers/devices please use the link on the home page of our website to log these issues.
Additional information...
ATL reporting is continuing during lockdown and parents are encouraged to engage with these via the Edge parent portal.
The Y11-13 Coursebooklet will be sent electronically to students this week. Students from year 10 upwards will need to start working through this in preparation for subject selection in 2022. Parents are encouraged to be proactive in this discussion.
For our Y11-13 students, it is essential that engagement with learning is happening. The end of the year and NCEA exams are not that far away.
For the remainder of the week we can settle into our at home routines. For those working on farms, we understand that this is a very busy time of the year and understand that your job has not stopped. If encouraging learning at home is causing issues and extra strain on the household, please discuss these with your child's classroom or Ako teacher and we might be able to provide some advice and support.
Please do take care, ngā mihi nui,
Stephen Beck Principal - Tumuaki Hurunui College sb@hurunuicollege.school.nz
20 August 2021
Kia ora koutou parents and whānau,
With the announcement this afternoon that we will be remaining at Alert Level 4 until Tuesday midnight, it is appropriate that I update the school community on what this will look like at Hurunui College. We can also only make an assumption that after this time we will either remain at AL4 or only shift down to AL3. Due to this we will start ramping up our learning up home capabilities from next week and this will start with the distribution of devices and learning materials to homes from Monday. School will continue to be closed onsite for all children. We are in the process of contacting families to better understand your needs. Thank you to those that have been contactable, it is also of concern the number that we have not been able to contact. If you have not received direct contact from the school, please reach out to us.
With a possible shift to AL3 later next week, supervision will only be available to children of essential workers that are unable to provide supervision in the home. Supervision includes…
An older sibling in your household
A parent or guardian that is not an essential worker
A grandparent, relative or adult that is part of your bubble and can provide supervision
Over the weekend we will be preparing learning materials and devices to be delivered to homes. This delivery must be contactless and we must know that you are home. This will take some logistics and we ask that you cooperate with us the best you can. Guidelines for the care and use of school devices in the home will be included.
Continue the fantastic work you are all doing at home. If you have any questions please contact your child's homeroom or Ako teachers.
Ngā mihi nui,
Stephen Beck Principal - Tumuaki Hurunui College sb@hurunuicollege.school.nz
18 August 2021
Kia ora koutou parents and whānau,
As we complete our first day of lockdown in well over a year, I hope all are managing to maintain some sense of normality and are optimistic that we may be able to move out of AL4 after a relatively short period of time. When and what this looks like is still well up in the air and continued testing and the whereabouts of positive cases will dictate the government's next steps for us in the South Island.
The general advice has not changed from yesterday. Teachers will be endeavouring to make some contact with parents and whānau so please ensure you are checking emails. For our older students, teachers will be making direct contact and advising on what learning can be carried on with at home. We are tentatively planning for what learning at home might look like if we remain in Lv4 or drop down to Lv3. This will include logistics around distributing devices to students that need them. If we return to Lv2, school will open for all students.
We will be watching the announcements over the next 48hrs in an attempt to predict our own next steps. If you have any immediate questions or concerns please firstly contact your children's homeroom or Ako teachers.
Stay safe and stay at home. Ngā mihi nui,
Stephen Beck Principal - Tumuaki Hurunui College
17 August 2021
Nau mai, haere mai.
Due to the nationwide move into Alert Lv4, the school will be closed for the next three days.
As the announcement came with minimal warning, we did not have the opportunity to distribute individual devices to students.
Due to this and a hopeful short closure, we will not immediately be rolling out a coordinated learning from home programme. The Leadership Team will be meeting via zoom and revising a plan tomorrow morning and more information will be provided to families. This will include developing a long term plan if needed.
For the immediate term, older students will be able to communicate with their teachers via email and google classroom and this is most important for our NCEA students.
Initial advice is to stay home and stay safe. We've been through this before, and we'll get through this again.
Ngā mihi nui,
Stephen Beck Principal - Tumuaki Hurunui College sb@hurunuicollege.school.nz
Please ensure you stay connected with the multiple forms of school communication.
School website - access to the longterm school calendar and general information about the school.
Skool Loop App - pushes out school notices and newsletter, school calendar and can be used for notifying absences - critical mode of communication - download Skool Loop from the app store/google play and select Hurunui College
Edge Student Management System - the parent portal provides access to school accounts, student information, contact information and reporting. Contact the school office if you are unable to access this facility and we can talk you through the process. This is also available via the Edge Mobile App.
Facebook - used only for celebration and pushing out general information and last-minute reminders
