Board of Trustees Term 3 Newsletter

Kia ora koutou

Another term has flown by with some great achievements and experiences for our children. We have survived the winter term, and I am sure everyone is looking forward to some warmer weather, hopefully in time for the holidays! Once again, we extend a huge thank you to all our wonderful teachers and support staff who have put so much into the school in what has been an incredibly busy term.

Below are a few updates, as usual if you have any questions or comments on any of these please have a chat to one of the board or send us an email on ridgwaybot@gmail.com

Ridgway Bikes in Schools Project

Thank you to everyone who attended the recent Bikes in Schools Project evening. If you didn’t manage to get there but are interested in finding out more or helping out, please email ridgwaybot@gmail.com or Jasoneady@hotmail.com

Ridgway School has secured $50,000 from Wellington City Council to kick start a Bikes in Schools project. Concept designs have been completed and consultation with stakeholders about track design and storage facility arrangements are in the home stretch.

The project will build an all-weather asphalt perimeter track (~Feb 2018), a skills track and a pump track, which will all be accessible to the whole community. The school will also purchase about 50 bikes and a helmet for each child at the school.

The next steps are finalising the design details and raising additional funds. Please let us know if you can assist with funding applications or fundraising events, selecting bicycles, landscaping, making tea, communications and cooking sausages. This volunteering could be for a single event or to co-ordinate a group of people over multiple events.

Sandpit & Shade Areas

Work is continuing behind the scenes on the renovated sandpit and shade areas. We have recently had this space surveyed and are awaiting availability on a structural engineer to conduct further work. It is expected plans will be submitted for consent by November for building work to start in January.

Featured below are the current concept plans. There will be an up-grade of the sandpit itself and a new shade structure with multi-level seating underneath. In between the two structures there will be some landscaping to cover the area where water pools after heavy rain. Both structures will provide shaded areas that our children can enjoy.

Thank you again to Ridgway parents Fiona Christie and Ben Zwartz who are supporting our school with their expertise on this project.

Artsplash

A huge thank you to Julie Hanify and Lisa Harper-Brown for preparing our choir for their performance at the Michael Fowler Centre last week. It was a great opportunity for our children to join other schools in an excellent performance enjoyed by all who participated and watched.

Noho Marae

Last month we had our first Ridgway Noho Marae (marae stay) at Takapūwāhia Marae in Porirua.

It was an action-packed 24 hours where our whānau experienced marae powhiri, eating together in the wharekai (dining room) and sleeping together in the wharenui (meeting house).

We hope that this was a memorable experience for our students (and their caregivers), especially for those who had not had such an opportunity before.

We want to thank the Whānau Group parents for initiating and helping to lead this trip for our school community. Also Kathryn Smith and our teaching and administration staff for their behind the scenes and on the scene organisation.

Thanks should also go out to those parents and caregivers who went along and were ‘hands-on’ helpers enabling everything to come together smoothly.

Parent Help

Above are just a couple of examples of events and activities at our school where parents help out and which would not be possible without this help. If we want these events to go ahead and go well we all need to get involved from time to time to spread the loadand ensure that our volunteers are given as much support and encouragement as possible. This ties in with our school’s values and makes our school such a great community to be a part of. So please come and be involved in your school community in any way, shape or form you are able!

We hope you all have a safe and enjoyable school holidays and we look forward to seeing everyone back in the 4^th term.

Ngā mihi

Ridgway Board of Trustees