We are pleased to have completed 2023 with a surplus again. We had to be careful with money this year as we could not expect the extras grants we received in the last 3 years to help us get through and come out of COVID.
We are delighted that during the year we were able to sign the complete ownership of our Hall over to MOE and that they have also taken over complete responsibility for our Leaky Buildings. The major upside to this is that we no longer have a financial liability for these things. The only downside (which is minor) is that we do not have control over the timing or the method of this work.
MOE have also decided (with our assent) to move the planned 5YA projects inside the centrally managed Leaky Building.
In terms of actual 5YA completion, we have completed the upgrade of our outdoor toilet block and that is all for now! On the list to deal with are:
Upgrading further Toilet Facilities
Dealing with our leaky buildings
Upgrading our classroom interiors
Resolving the remaining leaky building issues with our Hall
We are beginning a new relationship with Aurecon, who will be helping us plan our next 5YA.
The planning for New Builds has been long and rather frustrating. One big positive has been the ability to work in partnership with MOE in planning how this work should go ahead for the whole community of schools. This has been a learning curve for both us and the ministry.
We are still pursuing a complete understanding of:
How cultural narrative will be reflected in our architecture
Planning for co-located social service delivery
What the limitations are on the desired architecture we have locally e.g. variable space v single cell
We have continued to be able to host SKIDS and Mana Ako as regular after school provisions on our property. As well as this we have been able to use Rm17 as a well set-up Meeting Space. -Special thanks to Donna for help and support with this.
We acknowledge Felicity Matla and Liz de Kort of Rubix who have lived through a frustrating year waiting for MOE to decide how to spend our 5YA funding.
I am extremely grateful to Garth for his attention to detail and for managing so many important property issues and enabling me to get on with other things whilst ensuring our property is loved and looked after.
Finance Reports to the Board have been informative and timely.
We have had a tremendously challenging time with getting our Annual Audits done. We finally got our 2021 Audit signed off in July 2023 after having to write direct to the Auditor General. We have now written to the Auditor General again to see if we can effective action for our 2022 Audit which has not yet been begun at the time of writing this report.
Charlotte Sorenson retired at the end of Term 1 2023 and we were absolutely blessed to be able to employ Monica Zapata.
Monica has done an outstanding job at getting us and keeping us up to date. Well done Monica!
Our last piece of updating will be to "attack" our Asset Register early in the new year.
We will need to be careful with money again next year.
Pt England School acknowledges and thanks the Manaiakalani Education Trust for financial and resourcing support in the following ways:
supplying $90K to Pt England School for D.P. support to make the principal's involvement in Manaiakalani possible
supplying 1.0 P.A. Support
supplying the Manaiakalani Digital Fluency Intensive
Supplying the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher Programme
Supplying the Manaiakalani Reading Intensive Programme
providing free Manaiakalani PLD
holding the equity and liability for Student ChromeBook leases
building, supplying and maintaining the Tamaki Learning Network
supplying and facilitation the Manaiakalani Film Festival
supporting and enabling the Bay of Islands Teacher Summit
During 2023 we received Lost Learning Initiative support of $13,803.75 This was used to pay Support Staff to work with individuals and groups to help them re-enter school and access the curriculum.
In July this year we received our 2023 instalment of this funding, $6,000. We have carried the funding over to add to the 2024 amount, a further $6,000 and we are using it with Board approval to fund the Principal and Deputy Principal to the ISTE Conference in Denver Colorado in June 2024.
I am very grateful to Sam Fowler, David Bos and Bruce Nicholson from MOE property who have finally heard and understood and are really helping us bring sense out of our property confusion.
During 2023 Pt England School received $7,691.24 in funding for KiwiSport
This funding was paid to Manaiakalani Education Trust as part of the Tamaki Cluster Contribution to enhance enhance our Students' opportunity to participate and be taught in a variety of sports codes deliverd this year by Kelly Sports.
Other funding was used to help pay for swimming sessions, sports uniforms, coaching training, sports equipment and sports registrations.
The total number of students involved was 550