Kia ora e te whānau
Following the Prime Minister's announcement late this evening about the confirmed cases of community transmission of COVID-19 in NZ, we are required to move to Alert Level 2 tomorrow (Wednesday 12th August) and remain at that alert level for the rest of this week.
I have spoken with Ester, our Board Chair this evening and we have synthesised the available information from the various communications from Health, Education and the Prime Minister's messaging.
What this will mean for you and your children tomorrow, and for the rest of this week is:
- School is open and functioning (pretty much) as normal!
- The MOE website (updated tonight) states:
- It is safe for all children and students to be onsite (some children vulnerable to illness may choose to remain at home).
- Anyone self-isolating, waiting for a test result or who is ill, must remain at home.
- Our handwashing, sanitising and surface cleaning routines will be stepped back up to the gold standard again immediately
- Unless it is an emergency, we are asking everyone who are not staff, itinerant teachers or students to stay off site - this means a return to dropping off and picking up at the gate. We will have teachers at the gates to support children to transition into school.
- If you do have to come on site for any reason, please visit the office FIRST and sign in using either our digital sign-in register or the paper register. Please ALSO use the national COVID Tracer App to register by scanning a QR code on one of our entry doors.
- If your child is unwell, please keep them at home.
- Assembly will be cancelled, however BOOK CHARACTER DAY on Friday will still go ahead.
- If you have a meeting booked with a member of staff, they will be in contact with you to either reschedule this, or book it via a ZOOM.
- As we did at Alert Level 2 last time, the CSM Outreach music lessons and band programme will continue at school, with distancing as required.
As always, please keep sick children at home, AND remember to let the office know you are doing this. (We purchased a new cellphone this week for our text messaging so the issues that we have had around receiving text messages from parents last week should now be resolved.)
The school cellphone number is 021 027 94107 or you can email office@beckenham.school.nz
At this stage, there has been no public health message suggesting that we should adopt the wearing of masks. We are aware that New Zealanders have been asked to prepare for this possibility over the past week. We are expecting that this may become a public health recommendation going forward and encourage you to prepare your family for this possibility.
If you have any questions or worries, please contact us by phone or email and we will respond as quickly as we can.
We've got this!
Sandy and the team