Special Newsletter, Sunday 17 March, 2019

Kia ora koutou

Thank you all for the support you gave to our staff during the extremely challenging afternoon that last Friday developed into. Whilst we practice lockdowns at school with staff and children, we became very conscious that we have not ever really communicated to whānau what your role in a lockdown is, and so we appreciate that you trusted our messaging and the processes that we were asked to follow by the Police. This made our job of looking after all 470 of our children, much easier to do.

Our thoughts and condolences go out to everyone in our wider community who has been impacted in some way by the acts of violence that took place in our city on Friday. That such a thing could happen to people in our city is beyond our comprehension.

We know, as adults, how challenging and confronting it has been over the past 48 hours to process and to try and make sense of what has happened.

How challenging might this be for our children?
How do we ensure that they continue to feel safe?

These are the questions that are on all of our minds, as we head back to school tomorrow.

Our leadership team met for two hours this afternoon, to ensure that we have a plan that will support our staff, our children and you, our community, over the days ahead.
I would like to share this with you below.

Flag:

The New Zealand flag will be flying at half mast tomorrow, to pay our respects to those who have passed, and to their families and communities.

We encourage you to set your children up for as normal a day as possible tomorrow. When the doors to hubs open at 8:30am, you being able to leave them with a smile and a 'see you at 3pm' wave will reassure them that you are confident that they will be safe. One of the things we will be saying to children who might be looking anxious, is to reassure them that school is a very safe place, and that you are confident of that too. 

We know that when you catch up with other parents in the morning, possibly for the first time since the events on Friday, you may want to talk with them about your experiences and your feelings. To enable you to do this without worrying the children, we would like to make the staffroom available for any parents who would like to take their coffee in (or make a coffee in the staffroom) and to sit and chat there, away from children's ears.

We know as adults, it can help to talk to process, so please feel welcome to use this space if you would like to. 

We know that each family will have had different levels of conversations with their children about Friday's events. We would ask you to caution your children about talking with other children about the details of the events as not all children will be as aware of the details as others. We will be actively trying to monitor conversations and direct them to positive discussions, and we cannot be ears in every conversation children have during the day.

Our focus at school will be on reassuring all of the children that school is a safe place to be. We will be following the guidelines sent to us today by Dr Kathleen Liberty which I will also send to you as a separate attachment in another email immediately after this. Dr Liberty is the researcher whom we have worked with for the past 5 years on understanding the effect of trauma on children entering school. She has spent her weekend putting this resource of evidence-based strategies together especially for teachers and parents in Christchurch.

We have brought in relievers tomorrow so that we have an additional staff member in each team , to support both our staff and our children. We are very conscious that our staff are also processing their own responses to this tragedy, some are supporting their own children, and some will also be attending funerals in the coming days.

We will have rooms set up where children can be brought to during the day if they need 'time out' or support with anxiety or feelings that are overwhelming. We will be encouraging them to talk about small, positive steps that they can take to focus on the reliable and constant positive areas of their lives.

Our team of Kaimahi (staff) who provide support to us through Mana Ake (mental health and wellbeing for Canterbury Children) will be on standby this week as schools return and will be available for our most pressing needs. If you have concerns about how your child is managing, please contact Sue Leadbetter or myself and we will be able to make a referral for support.

Please note that the union meetings scheduled for Wednesday this week have been postponed, so we will not need to finish early.

We look forward to seeing all of the children back at school tomorrow.