COVID-19 Update #5 From the Principal
23 March 2020
Kia ora koutou
With today’s announcement by the Government, we are implementing with urgency our plans to
support your child’s learning from home. We appreciate this is a sudden and significant change, and
that it will be heavily disruptive to many people in our community.
To sum up: for children of essential workers, school is open tomorrow morning and Wednesday, and
we can provide supervision. You may wish to check if you are considered an essential worker
- https://covid19.govt.nz/government-actions/covid-19-alert-system/. We continue to ask that
students in this category who are not well, do not attend school. After Wednesday school will be
completely closed for everyone.
For all other students, we will be supporting their learning from home in the following ways:
through online learning
provision of hardcopy resources where possible
encouragement to contact teachers online from home
Please note that staff will be continuing to work from their homes during this period, and are
expected to provide work for students during normal school hours. For the next two days they are
meeting at school to explore ways to best deliver this.
If you need to have your child cared for by someone else, you will need to identify that person or
people as part of your self-isolated group. This will need to be done by midnight Wednesday and
the group must remain the same for the whole 4-week period. The caregiver’s own group (eg, their
spouse/partner and children), your child and your own group (eg, your parents and other children)
become one group. This group needs to be limited to minimise any risk of spread and should be no
more than 20 people.
Your child will be looking to you for guidance about this decision. Parents, caregivers, whānau and
teachers will have a particularly important part to play in reassuring young people at this time. If
you haven’t already done so, you may wish to read the information put together by the Ministry of
Education to support your conversations with your children – Talking to children about COVID-19
As noted by the Prime Minister these restrictions are our best chance to slow the virus in New
Zealand and to save lives. We all have a clear role here to slow the spread of COVID-19.
We will continue to communicate with you over the coming days. The school office will be staffed
until 4.00pm Wednesday. After that time, the phones will not be answered, but you can
communicate via email (admin@rangitikeicollege.school.nz). Thank you for your ongoing support of
our school staff and school community.
Ad Altiora; Mauri Ora
Tony Booker
PRINCIPAL
