COVID-19 Update

15 October 2021

Kia ora whānau,

I hope you are all well and that you are enjoying the last days of our school term break.

Just a reminder: at Alert Level 3 people are asked to keep their bubbles as small as possible and to work and learn from home if you can. This means that for the vast majority of Matangi School students, school remains closed, and our online learning will start Monday of Term 4. Your child’s teacher will post on Seesaw, a welcome to the term and a fun task for them to do.

For the small number of parents who are Essential workers and need to return to work at Alert Level 3, Matangi School will not be functioning in the way students and whānau are used to. As it was in Term 3, a range of additional health and safety restrictions will apply when school reopens on Monday the 18^th of October for those learners who have parents who need to be physically at their place of work as an Essential worker, and there is no other person in their immediate or extended bubble who can supervise them during the day.

If your work requires you to leave the home i.e. you are an Essential Worker, which results in your child/ren not having the supervision they need, then onsite/online supervision may be an option for you.

If, as an Essential Worker, you require onsite supervision for your child/ren and have no other means to find care for your child/ren for next week (Monday 18th to Friday 22nd of October), please complete the form sent out to you yesterday, by 3pm today – Friday the 15th of October. We will be organising staff, in response to this, so unfortunately we cannot accept any late responses. This will allow us to ensure that we have everything in place to safely supervise onsite learning at Alert Level 3.

If we are to stay at Level 3 longer than the five days we are currently in, we will organise a distribution of devices, very much like we did for our last Lockdown: a Google form will be sent out, asking for the device you will require. However, let’s just wait and see what the update is from the Government, before we begin to organise the distribution of devices.

Our Matangi School staff on-site will have been tested for COVID-19. We are moving toward having 100% of our staff vaccinated – so we are all playing our part in keeping our community safe.

We are proud of how our Matangi community has responded to this outbreak, but the mahi isn’t done as yet. Please continue to follow all the alert level requirements including staying at home and getting tested for COVID-19 if you are feeling unwell.

We will continue to keep you up to date with information from the Ministry of Education and will have more details to share with you shortly. Thank you for working with us to keep everyone safe.

Nga mihi

Kia noho haumaru – stay safe

Helena Kirkham

Acting Principal