SURVEY TO complete about returning to douglas park school

Kia ora whanāu,

Following on from my message about the shift to Level 3, today I am sending a survey to each of you to complete about a possible return to DPS. Two important points from the Prime Minister:

1. Stay home. If you are not at work, school, exercising or getting essentials, then you must be at home, the same as at Level 4.

2. Work and learn from home if you can. We still want the vast majority of people working from home, and children and young people learning from home.

The key message for you is that if you can, you should keep your child at home. You should only physically send your child to school if you need to.

Attached to this post is a notice from the Minister of Education that has been tailored to Douglas Park. Please take the time to read this as it describes what on-site learning will look like.

Here is the link to the return to school survey. We need a response for each student...whether they will be coming back or not under Level 3. https://forms.gle/hHLKL75E6VyhP8WVA

Thanks, stay safe, be kind and wash those hands

Gareth

NOTICE FROM THE MINISTRY

Kia ora whānau

We hope that Term 2 and our distance learning programme has been a success for you so far. We know there will have been any number of challenges for you to deal with but we have been getting some great feedback about the learning that is happening and thank you for all your support.

Yesterday the Government decided that we will move into Alert Level 3 on 28 April. That means we will be open to receive students from the 29 April. We will start to prepare our site from tomorrow.

The key message for you is that if you can, you should keep your child at home. You should only physically send your child to school if you need to.

If your child has a health condition that means they are at a greater risk of a severe illness you must keep them at home. If your child is sick please also ensure you keep them at home.

In order to ensure the safety of those children and our staff who do come to school, we will be operating with strict enforcement of health and safety measures.

School at Level 3 is going to be very different from prior to the Lockdown. The ‘Learning at Home’ plan will carry on, with the children onsite being supervised to complete that work. It will be the same programme.

There will be some changes to normal school operation, please have a read of these carefully:

• Students will be assigned to a “bubble”. Their school bubble will contain a maximum of 10 students. They will stay in that bubble for the duration of the Level 3 Alert, with no mixing. Siblings will be in bubbles together.
• Our school bubbles will have 2 adults assigned to them that will supervise the students completing the ‘Learning at Home’ programmes that are currently being delivered by teachers. These adults may not be your child’s normal teacher
• The playground and sports gear will not be accessible, and break times will be taken in their bubble groups.
• Students will be allocated a drop off and pick up entrance to the school, eg our Hall Gate.
• No parents or visitors will enter the school grounds. Pickup and dropoff will happen at these school entrances
• All unwell students will be sent home immediately
• All surfaces will be cleaned during the day, and at the end of each day

Our ‘Learning at Home’ plan will carry on, and is the learning for all students whether they are on-site or at home.

We are contacting you now to find out whether you can keep your child learning from home, or need your child to attend in person and seek this information urgently. Here is the link to the online survey.

The Ministry of Education has advised that they are working closely with Public Health to develop clear guidance that will support schools to safely re-open their premises to students and staff. This will help us work through the public health requirements that we all need to meet. As you will be doing, we want to be sure that what we do will keep our community as safe as possible.

For now, we will continue to support your child’s learning by distance while we progress our planning for what Alert Level 3 will mean for you and for our school. We will be in touch again soon with more information. As you have been doing, please keep connecting with your teachers with any questions you might have.

I appreciate your support and understanding with this

Gareth