COVID Level 2 Week 5 – Swimming Sports

Good Afternoon Parents, Caregivers & Whānau,


Well, we all know what to do now, but I will repeat the information below, but also wish to thank you for what you are achieving with your children in keeping them happy and relaxed and accepting that this is part of our new life at the moment. The saddest thing is that we cannot have spectators at our swimming heats and finals this week. We need to continue with these events, in case the Interschool Swimming Sports is still able to go ahead on Monday 8th March. With school camps and other events, only a few shared dates have worked for us all this year. We are going to try and live-stream the swimming heats on either our web page or Seesaw and we will let you know in the morning.

All Pirongia and Maungatautari Students to bring their togs, caps, towels, named whanau shirts, warm gear and plenty of food & water and sunscreen tomorrow, please. We are going to try and hold all our heats tomorrow, due to the weather forecasts and now, having more flexibility with just staff and students on site.

Level 2 – What does that mean for your children and school?

It’s back to parents dropping and picking up children from your selected gate. I think most families are organised for this now. Our youngest five-year-olds may need a day or two to get this sorted. Puriri 5 and Harakeke 18 only have half numbers in their classes at present, so these parents may come and drop your child into the classroom. Please ensure you sign the class COVID register and keep your distance from others. Other five-year old’s needing support may have their parents drop them to their classroom door and sign the class register to show you have been on site. All other parents, unless your child has special needs, please socially distance outside the school gates. For new families, we have 10 clearly marked gates plus our Bus gate.

Thank you once again. Our children showed great resilience last year and stepped up with their self-management skills. I am sure they will be just as amazing this year, if not more so as we have normalised many of the behaviours.

If you have older students who catch their bus from our school, can you please remind them to use the bike racks at the TCC and not enter our grounds, but walk around.

We will be keeping up a regime of hand sanitising and hand washing.

More detailed information:

Level 2:

Firstly here are the main Government messages.

Play it safe

These are the most important things that you can do:

COVID-19 is still out there. Play it safe.

  • Keep your distance from other people in public. (Ideally 2 metres).
  • If you’re sick, stay home. Don’t go to work or school. Don’t socialise.
  • If you have symptoms of cold or flu call your doctor or Healthline and get tested.
  • Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Wash your hands.
  • Sneeze and cough into your elbow, regularly disinfect surfaces.
  • If you have been told to self-isolate you must do so immediately.
  • Keep a track of where you’ve been and who you’ve seen. Use the App with Bluetooth on.

Social Distancing & Contact Tracing:

  • Gates: All gates will be open and available for students to access their classrooms to allow greater spread.
  • Before school – Students need to go straight to their own classrooms areas, rather than having everyone mixing across the school.
  • Choose your gate, so your children know where you will be meeting them after school. Teachers may have students spread out near the gates to ease any congestion.
  • Please stay in cars if the area is too congested and students can stay on the inside until you are ready.
  • The bus will be operating as normal with our usual register being taken, hands will be sanitised before boarding.

Onsite – staying out of moist air zones:

  • Three mini schools will be operating on site; Taupiri, Pirongia and Maungatautari.
  • To avoid unnecessary mixing of big numbers, we will be allocating different play areas amongst the three Syndicate groups.
  • As per usual, there will be no sharing of food.
  • All children to please bring their own water bottles to school.
  • Children will have their own table/desk space and floor space to help keep a reasonable spacing

Itinerant Teachers:

  • Music Tuition and other extracurricular activities will continue with their COVID tracing plans and systems in place.

Before & After School Care:-

  • Please text or ring in advance if you will be dropping your children in at the gate for Before School Care.
  • Pick Up. Please ring or text and your child will be signed out and join you at the usual gate.

Thank you, everyone – kia kaha! We can do this – again!

Kind regards


Waveney Parker

Principal