UPDATE - 25 May 2020
Kia ora e te whanau,
We will be sending student attendance data to the Ministry weekly, from 29 May. The purpose is to:
- report to the National Crisis Monitoring Centre and government on levels of attendance during the COVID-19 period
- inform and support Ministry planning for students and schools returning to normal operation
- evaluate and report on the effectiveness of initiatives implemented by the Ministry to respond and manage its response to COVID-19.
Nga mihi nui
Matua Cam
principal@gfs.school.nz
UPDATE - 8 May 2020
Kia ora koutou
On Thursday the 7th May the Prime Minister advised that in Alert Level 2 schools are safe environments for children, young people and staff and that additional public health control measures are in place to prevent the spread of disease and to support contact tracing.
The good news is that when we are able to, we will be ready to welcome all students and staff back to our school site. Students who are immune compromised have the option of staying home but will be welcome with a good plan in place. We will conduct a survey on Monday to ascertain who needs support.
The key Public Health approach is to minimise the risk that someone gets infected in the first place, and second to ensure we can identify and contact anyone who has been in close contact with a person, if someone in a school is infected.
You can be assured that in Alert Level 2 we will know who is at school, who our staff and students have been in close contact with and take appropriate measures to keep everyone safe.
Physical distancing is challenging in our school setting, so good hygiene practices and regular cleaning are even more important here. This includes staff and students coughing into their elbows, handwashing and drying and regular cleaning of commonly touched surfaces.
Under Alert Level 2, we advise any students and staff to stay at home if they are sick, and we will send anyone home immediately if they show any symptoms.
Our school has safe and sensible practices to maintain the health and safety of everyone on the school site. It’s important however that not just at school but at home, safe hygiene habits are practised by everyone, as this is essential to minimise the risk that someone gets infected with Covid-19.
For more information about the public health measures at Alert Level 2, you can visit the covid19.govt.nz website: https://covid19.govt.nz/
If you have any questions about our health and safety plan, or have a child who might be vulnerable to serious illness and would like to discuss a plan for them, please contact me.
We will be in touch again soon to update you on our plans.
Ngā mihi
Matua Cam
UPDATE - 21 April 2020
Goldfields will not open on 29 April 2020. We are awaiting further instruction from the Ministry of Education as to when we can open the school again. Some of the reasons we are not opening at this time are:
- We have students with serious immunity issues,
- We have students that come from many different regions,
- All our students take transport to school that has other students from other bubbles,
- We would find social distancing at school, really hard because of the type of students we have,
- We have satellite classes and host school communities to consider,
The Ministry of Education has stated that we may open up at some point during Level 3 for children of essential workers. However, we do not yet know when that might be. Once I know, I will share it with you.
If you need support from the teachers, please get in touch with me directly, on email principal@gfs.school.nz
Matua Cam
Monday-Friday 9am-5pm
55 Norwood Road
Paeroa
Phone: 07 862 7172
Moblie: 021 277 3214
Email: office@gfs.school.nz