Week 8 NEWSLETTER

Kaitiakitanga - Caring for Our Place

Several stories worth sharing about our progress as a sustainable school:

• Monday after lunch I was working in the office when two of the Enviro Group came in with a plate of pasta for me...pasta with a basil pesto made from basil that they had grown themselves! Looked great, tasted delicious...well done team! The enviro group have grown a range of vege’s this year and have planted fruit trees for the future.

• The Leaders’ Team have been busy planning for 2021, including actions in the Enviro space. Something that we are committing to is heading towards becoming certified CarbonZero...looking at the total carbon footprint of the school, reducing where we can and offsetting the rest through planting. A great aim, a great challenge.

• Our solar panels we installed this year...50 of them...are really coming into their own now. Last Friday we were almost fully self sufficient for the day...as you’ll see from the image below (dark orange is power from the grid, light orange is power from the solar panels, dark blue is power we are sending back to the grid and light blue also shows the power we used from the solar). Schools are the perfect place for solar, and DPS is really showing that...

• Lastly, I recently watched a David Attenborough Documentary on Netflix... ‘A life on our Planet’ that was awesome. Simple message...he is 93 and has spent the vast majority of his life filming nature and has seen many changes. He worries for the future of the planet and the documentary notes these concerns. However, the best part of it all is the second half...where he takes the time to share examples of what we can do to improve things, actions we can take...ideas for the future. As a family, we have challenged ourselves to have at least one plant-based meal a week...not something that I have ever considered before, but we are enjoying it so far. An easy action, with potentially powerful outcomes. The doco is great, and worth a watch if you have Netflix

A big thanks to Peter Lee

An opportunity to say thanks once again to Peter Lee, the ex-Principal who generously donates to our school. Over the last two years we have used these funds to provide for our Eel and Stream Restoration Project. We started with a choked up, rubbish filled stretch of water with no/minimal life...and over time we have added access to the fence, removed all the rubbish from our stretch of stream, been welcomed into two neighbouring properties and recently we have seen the return of baby eel to the stream. The water is clear, life is returning...and we feel a real sense of achievement. Many thanks Peter...your generosity has helped make this a reality, has given us an enduring project and has helped develop a real sense of environmental care and ownership into the boys. Cheers.

Leaving us? Coming Here?

Please let us know if your children won’t be back for 2021 in order to help finalise class lists. We know of a handful...heading away to other regions/places and would appreciate knowing of any others.

Likewise...if you have any younger siblings, friends, cousins looking to come to DPS please make contact. Too late for out of zone children until Term 3 next year, but if you live in our zone you are more than welcome to join our school whānau

Lockdown Laundry

Lockdown Laundry was a public art project funded by Wellington City Council and organised by Katja Starke. One of our own...Elise...has been a part of this with her Poem about the COVID Lockdown (see below). The idea was to give people the opportunities to share their memories and experiences of the nation’s lockdown, sharing their stories and poems and ‘hanging them out to dry.’

Katja visited libraries around the country and will display the complete collection in Wellington at the end of this year and then plans to collate them into a book in 2021. Pretty cool project to be a part of and the poem is awesome...well done Elise!

The Magic Memory box

I will put in the box

The fresh breeze as I walked down the street, rustling noise of the fresh water at the river, one freshly cooked ANZAC biscuit.

I will put in the box

Some new episodes of inbestigators,

A shiny diamond block from minecraft, all the

episodes from odd squad that I watched on netflix.

I will put in the box

The thousands of teddy bears that I saw on my daily walks, The wasted time doing nothing in the lockdown, all the videos that on youtube that I saw.

My box is made out of:

The bright burning sun

It has hidden secrets at the very bottom of it

It's the only thing that will keep my secrets

This year we have the 2 spaces available on the Douglas Park School Board of Trustees. We have 3 candidates who have put their name forward and now you get to have your say. Voting papers will be coming to you via post and need to be returned to school by 4pm on Friday 4th December. There will be a ballot box in the office foyer or you can post it to us. If posting, please try to post it as early as possible as New Zealand Post has reduced postal delivery days in some areas.