News Update
Kia ora whānau
Firstly I would like to acknowledge the amazing staff we have, for their outstanding efforts today. We were all operating on significantly reduced sleep, some much more so than others. Our goal for today was to have the children have as normal a day as possible and we did achieve this, as much as we possibly could.
We had 300 out of our 465 children attend school today.
Communication:
We did send out text messages to all caregivers this morning, about the status of the school. If you didn't receive a text, please ensure that you contact Jacky in the office as soon as possible and check that we have current details for you.
Saying that, we are also aware that only around 80% of our text messages reached their destination this morning - the other 20% didn't get delivered which was frustrating. We discovered that we had similar issues with incoming texts also, when we started phoning parents of children whom we hadn't heard from and you were telling us you had sent a text!
Champion St:
We do have protocols for dealing with an emergency situation at Champion St. We have an emergency services quality radio with its own private channel to communicate between Champion St and Beckenham which we will be able to use in the event that the telephone and/or cell phone networks are down.
If we need to evacuate from Champion St, our plan will be to use buses to bring all the children back to Beckenham. Red Bus have assured us that children and schools are their first priority in an emergency. With this in mind, we would ask that you plan to meet all of your children, following an emergency, at Beckenham School, rather than have individual parents trying to get to Champion St. If this plan were to change, we would let the school office know to alert you.
Moving Forward
We do encourage you to have your children return to school tomorrow, if they were away due to the earthquake this morning, so that school can support you and them to have a strong sense of routine and normality.
There is a very useful site that you may want to explore, called 'The Worry Bug' which has a range of resources for parents and schools to use, to help understand and support anxious children.
These 7 tips for supporting children with anxiety come from their website and may be particularly useful over the next few days:
- It’s important to retain routines; get up at the same time, go to bed at the same time, keep mealtimes, school routines, after school activities the same.
- Turn media off, repetition of disturbing scenes adds to anxiety.
- Provide a calm and loving response; keep your adult worries away from children. If you are particularly upset: don’t talk about it with your children, get support from other adults you trust.
- Keep normal disciplinary boundaries. If kids are pushing these, it is important that they know their parents are still in charge - the world is unpredictable enough without these changing.
- Give reassurance but don’t overdo it. Too much reassurance means there is something to be worried about!
- Creating narratives to explain what happened can be useful for younger children.
- Let them talk about it, but don’t let it take over, use play to get their minds off it. Do the things that you and your children enjoy – distraction is a wonderful thing!
If you have any questions or concerns about how the school will support your child in an emergency, please don't hesitate to contact me or the office, and we will assist you in whatever way we can.
Kia kaha
Sandy and the team