Pāpāmoa Primary

Kia Ora Koutou,

It’s a bustling week across the city with over 13,000 intermediate-aged children participating in the AIMS Games! Many of our staff and whānau have children competing, and we wish all participants the best of luck.

After School Concerns

Recently, we’ve noticed an increasing number of students staying on-site after school, often unsupervised. Some children are remaining as late as 4:30pm while waiting for whānau. Unfortunately, we’ve also encountered a few incidents involving students during this time, when staff are in meetings or engaged in planning.

As a school, our legal responsibility ends when the school day finishes and care is transferred back to parents. Often, it’s the unsupervised children who face issues, and this then requires staff intervention.

We are proud of our facilities and love seeing children and families enjoying the playgrounds and courts. However, if these challenges persist, we may need to take measures, such as ringing a bell to clear the grounds. We hope to avoid this by improving end-of-day processes and ensuring timely student collection.

For whānau who allow their children to play after school, we ask that your children head home first and return to school grounds in mufti. This ensures that care has been transferred to you. For those supervising their children while catching up with others, please keep an eye on them and assist in resolving any issues where possible.

Parent-Teacher Interviews

This week is also busy with Parent-Teacher Interviews taking place on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after school. In the past, we held all interviews on one day, closing the school. However, we understand the challenges this presents for families, so we now spread interviews over three evenings.

We’re thrilled that 85% of our whānau have registered for interviews—thank you for your commitment! If you haven’t yet secured your time, please reach out to your child’s teacher.

Fundraisers and Gold Coin Donations

We have a few fundraising events coming up, including StarJam this Friday, and Wig Wednesday next week in support of Kids Cancer. These events follow our recent Daffodil Day.

We encourage your participation in these donation days, and if your whānau can contribute a gold coin, that’s wonderful—but it’s also completely okay if you cannot. Your children are welcome to join in regardless.

Teacher Only Days - Term 4, 2024

We understand that Teacher Only Days can be a challenge for families. However, these days are provided by the Ministry of Education to support important initiatives. Our next Teacher Only Day will be on Friday, November 15, focusing on the new curriculum.

Looking ahead, we’ve also been allocated two Teacher Only Days in 2025 for the rollout of the new Maths Curriculum, which you may have heard about in recent news.

These days will offer staff dedicated time for professional learning and development, focusing on the updated Year 0-8 maths and pāngarau curriculum. We’ll keep you informed about specific dates once we know more.

2025 Term Dates

We’ve had a few queries about term dates for 2025. Below are the confirmed dates, along with public holidays. We’ll add our Teacher Only Days once confirmed.

• Term One: Monday 3rd February - Friday 11th April (11 weeks)

  • Waitangi Day: Thursday 6th February

• Term Two: Monday 28th April - Friday 27th June (9 weeks)

  • King’s Birthday: Monday 2nd June
  • Matariki: Friday 20th June

• Term Three: Monday 14th July - Friday 19th September (10 weeks)

• Term Four: Monday 6th October - Tuesday 16th December (10 weeks, 2 days)

  • Labour Day: Monday 27th October
    
    

Thank you for your continued support and understanding. Have a wonderful week ahead!

Ngā mihi,

Matt Simeon

Principal

The children have been busy creating art work that can be made into customised Christmas gifts made from your own child’s art. These make unique Christmas gifts for family and friends and are perfect for posting overseas. Keep an eye out for your child's art work on Seesaw or in the classroom when you come in for your Learning Conference.

Orders can be placed on our school shop - https://www.papamoa.school.nz/shop

Orders close on Sunday 17th September.

Growing Through Grief will be running the Seasons for Growth programme at Pāpāmoa Primary School in Terms 3 and 4 this year. This programme provides a chance to explore the effects of change, loss, and grief on all aspects of a child – emotional, social, cognitive, physical and spiritual.

The sessions will run at school during school time by trained facilitators who are police vetted.

The programme will run for 8 weeks of the term and the cost is $20 per student. An invoice will

be sent out by the school for any child/children attending prior to the programme beginning.

If you would like your child to attend, please fill out an online referral form on the Growing

Through Grief website: https://acw.org.nz/seasons-for-growth-enrolment-form-children-and-

youth-programme-school-only/

Any further questions please contact Hannah Mortimore – (SENCO) or Tauranga Growing

Through Grief Coordinator Tracey Maris: tracey.maris@acw.org.nz

Our school website has the link to our school events calendar. Click on the link below to see all of the term events that parents need to know about.

The calendar has been updated with our Term 3 Events:

https://www.papamoa.school.nz/news-events

The extremely popular Fun First Football Programme is back on our Pap Primary sports field on Thursday after school in Term 4! This is their busiest term so Book early to guarantee a spot for your child as they will fill up fast . This is for kids aged 4yrs old - 9yrs old. Simply go to https://funfirstfootball.co.nz/ for more info or to Book today!

Term 1 05 Feb – 12 Apr

Term 2 29 Apr – 05 Jul

Term 3 22 Jul – 27 Sep

Term 4 14 Oct – 18 Dec

School Starts 8:40am

Morning Interval 10:30am - 11:00am

Lunch 12:40pm - 1.30pm

School Finishes 2:35pm Karewa and Matakana | 2:40pm Tūhua and Mōtītī

Please contact the office if your child is going to be absent from school on :

Phone: 542 3261 (absentee message service)

or

Email: papamoaprimary@papamoa.school.nz

or

Website: http://www.papamoa.school.nz/report_an_absentee

Please include your child’s name, room and reason for absence.

If your child arrives at school after 8.40am they are late. Please ensure they sign in at the office before going to class. Thank you.

As part of our School-Links communication system, an automated text message will go out to all unexplained absences. This number is a reply once only.

While we understand that families sometimes need to take time away from school, it is essential that we as a school are notified.

Any absence longer than 20 school days will need to be approved in advance by the school principal. You can do this by sending an email to papamoaprimary@papamoa.school.nz explaining the reason for your child's absence and the dates they will be away. If your child is absent for longer than 20 school days the MOE instructs us to remove a child from our school roll. If you live outside of our school zone there is no guarantee that your child will be able to re-enrol at Pāpāmoa Primary School. It's important to keep communication open between us. If you have any questions or concerns about this process, please feel free to reach out to us.

Thank you for your cooperation and support in your child's education.

School lunches are available everyday. Orders can be made via the School Shop by clicking here! Just one login for every school payment. Simple and easy!

You can order (or cancel) any time before 9am on the day or schedule in advance.

Lunch will be delivered to the school in time for lunch.

Get started now… Click here or go to www.mykindo.co.nz and click ‘create account’.

Help? Visit support.mykindo.co.nz or tel. 0800 EZLUNCH (0800 395 8624) week days 8am-4pm.

The mobile is tentatively scheduled to be onsite at Te Manawa O Papamoa School from Monday 29th May for the remainder of Term 2.

For emergencies, parents can phone 0800 TALK TEETH (0800 825 583) to find the nearest clinic.

It would greatly assist us if you could please advise the office if you have any changes of address, phone numbers or emergency caregiver details.

In the event of an emergency, sickness or injury we need to be able to contact someone who can collect your child.

All students are required to hand in prescribed medications to the office.

Office staff will only administer medicines to students once a form has been completed and signed by a parent or caregiver.

Would you like to know more about our School Policies and Procedures?

We invite you to visit the site at https://papamoa.schooldocs.co.nz
(note that there's no "www.").

Our username is "papamoa" and password "3118".

Phone: 07 542 0865

Location: 312 Dickson Road Pāpāmoa

Email: admin@papamoa.school.nz
Website: www.papamoa.school.nz
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PapamoaPrimarySchool/