News and Notices

From the Principal

What a wonderful start to the year with blue skies and a lot of happy children. Every child I have spoken to has said how excited they are to be back at school.

2024 promises to be an exciting and busy year, with much to challenge and engage our students. We are going to be looking at Marvellous Machines as part of our Inquiry and will take the children to the Tip Top Factory for visit to kick this off.

We have a number of children starting at Ridgeview in the next few weeks. Please make our new families feel welcome. A special RidgeView welcome to Gideon, George and Keanu.

Swimming Pool

The pool is up and running, and the water is a lovely temperature. Our children are in the priviliged position of having swimming lessons three times a week. Please note, swimming is part of our curriculum and every child has to take part. If your child is genuinely sick, please send a note or email to the class teacher.

From Monday 5 February the pool is open after school from 3pm until about 5pm. Members of the community are welcome to use the pool, we just ask that you give us a gold coin donation or pop a donation into our school account with pool in the statement details.

The pool will be open on Tuesday 6 February from about 10am if we have families who would like tomake use of this. Once again we ask for a gold coin donation. Please email me on principal@ridgeview.school.nz if you are thinking of swimming on Tuesday.

Music Lessons

There are two options for private music lessons at school.

Blain from the Music Education Centre comes into school once a week to teach keyboard/piano. If you are interested in investigating lessons, please look on the website https://www.musiceducation.co.nz/

and make contact directly with the centre.

Daniel will do guitar lessons at school if there is enough interest. He does one-on-one lessons for $35 per lesson. If this is something your child is interested in, please contact Daniel on

danieldoesguitar@gmail.com.

No Mobile Phones at School

The new government has mandated that students may not have mobile phones in school. This is generally not an issue at our school, but we will pass a policy at our next Board Meeting that states that:

students may not have a mobile phone in school unless it has been agreed with the teacher and is to help with schoolwork
if students do bring a mobile phone to school they will be asked to take it to the office and collect it at the end of the day

Literacy and Maths Requirements

The coalition government passed a law just before Christmas stating that all schools must do 10 hours of reading and writing, and 5 hours of maths per week.

Like all the schools in our Kahui ako (Community of Learners), we already do more than this in a week.

New Board Member

One of our board members bought a house in another area and has moved her family to a new area and new school. We therefore need to find a replacement trustee.

The Board meets 8 times a year, usually in Week 3 and Week 8 of the term. The Board sets the direction that they want the school to take and deals with governance issues. The Board needs to make sure that we are legally compliant and approve policies and strategies etc.

If you think you might be interested in standing for the Board, please have a chat with me. Our next meeting is on Tuesday 13 February at 5.30pm. We would love you to come along and see what we do.

Report back on Strategic Plan

Every year we need to report back to the community on how we have tracked against our annual goals for our strategic plan.

Please click on the following link to access the report.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14BuYMtpJXbXzQOLDCqwFn1-yuGAFoKgr/view?usp=sharing

Out of School Care

Please make sure that you book your child into Before and After School Care by either emailing office@ridgeview.school.nz or phoning the school on 027 593 5963.

Community Volunteers

I am still looking for opportunities to take small groups of children (3 or 4) into the community on Friday morning for an hour or two. If you know of someone we could help or something we could do, please make contact with the school.

Spare Clothes

Please can you make sure that your child has a spare set of clothes in their bag - it does not have to be school uniform. This is for all children.

Telephone Number

Our telephone number is 027 593 5963.