Pāpāmoa Primary
Growing Successful Learners - Whakatipu Mātauranga
Matt's Message
Welcome back to the 2024 school year. After a long summer break it has been great to be back at school and into the swing of things. Like many of the schools around Tauranga our late start was attributed to Waitangi day being on a Tuesday and the number of days our school needs to be open for instruction in 2024. If we had started earlier, we would have been finishing school a lot earlier in December, which I know many parents would not have enjoyed either. So I appreciate the challenge the late start had on many of you. This was something that was discussed at length by both Principal's locally and also our school board, back when we set our 2024 dates. For your reference, our term dates are listed below.
Welcome to new Whānau
Welcome to the nearly 60 new families who have joined Pāpāmoa Primary this year. We hope that your introduction and welcome to our school has been positive.
We would like to invite all new families to our offical beginning of the year Powhiri this Friday at 9:00am in the school hall. For those of you who are unable to make this event, I extend a warm welcome to you.
Welcome to our International Families
Pāpāmoa Primary School is now a signatory to the code of practice for the pastoral care of International fee paying students. This has meant that from the beginning of this year we have welcomed 16 International students into our school. Many of our Korean students and families are only here for the first 4-6 weeks of the term as an educational experience. However we do also have 7 children who will be staying for the entire school year and another 2-4 children who will start in Term 3 2024.
Like many other Primary Schools in Tauranga, this is an exciting opportunity for our school to share our school and culture with these students and their whānau, but also an opportunity for our children and staff to learn more about our international families and their culture too.
New School Uniform
It is exciting to see the new school uniform being worn by students as they have entered school. We are very pleased that it just blends in with the old uniform. Thank you to all of you who purchased the uniform via the office. We appreciate that at times this was very busy, so thank you for your patience during these busy times. We do hope that the wait in the office was much less time than having to travel into the city to purchase the uniform.
I would like to acknowledge our team of staff in the office who worked through the introduction and the teething problems in selling the uniform from the office. A big thank you to you all!
School Developments - 2024-2026
For the last couple of years, the school board has been working with, and at times fighting with the Ministry of Education to get some of our buildings that are not fit for purpose replaced and rectified.
Late last year we made some steps in the right direction for our school and community. During the first half of 2024, we will continue with the planning and architectural work to make this a reality. While I am very reluctant to put dates in writing for building projects with the MOE, we are working towards and aiming to have some action on site in the second half of this year. While I am positive about this, I won't hold my breath, but I will keep you as a community posted as things progress and we know more.
Events and Activities
We have a number of exciting events and activities happening this term across the school. You will see a link listed below to all of our events where we would either like parents at school enjoying these events or when your children will be off site. If you are not sure about something, please do not hesitate to make contact directly with your child's classroom teacher. All of our staff's email addresses are listed on the school website.
Cultural Week Monday 4th - Friday 8th March
As a school we have a large number of cultures and nationalities represented across our school. As part of our Ko Wai Au? Who Am I? learning happening across our school at the beginning of this term, we want to share and celebrate our diverse cultures.
During this week, our teachers will be exploring cultures within their classes, alongside their tamariki and some whānau.
Colour Run - March 7th
On Thursday 7th March, we will be having a school Colour Run in the afternoon. The colour run is a festival of colour often celebrated in the Indian culture. Your children will want/need a white tee shirt for this event. There will be more details coming out about the colour run in the coming weeks. If you would like to understand this more, please watch this short video that I captured when I was at Pillans Point School.
Cultural Dress Day - March 8th
Many of the worlds cultures have amazing cultural outfits that we would like to celebrate. From the Korean Hanbok through to the Japanese Kimono and the German Dirndl or Lederhosen.
We would like to invite all of our children to dress up in their cultures costume for school on this day. We will have a parade of cultures in the morning and if children would like to bring a change of clothes (not uniform), they are welcome to do so to look after their special outfits.
The thing that always makes me wonder on days like this is what is the traditional costume of New Zealand? The Māori culture has their kākahu , but what is the costume of our nation? Red Bands and a black singlet? All Blacks Jersey... I will again wait and see what our tamariki come dressed as.
As you see, we have some exciting things happening this term, and we look forward to sharing this with our community.
I look forward to seeing many of you in and around school in the coming weeks.
Ngā mihi
Matt
Term 1 Events Calendar
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 1 Events:
2024 Term Dates
USEFUL INFORMATION FOR WHĀNAU
TERM DATES 2024
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 BELL TIMES
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
ABSENTEE INFORMATION
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.
LUNCH ORDERS
You can order (or cancel) any time before 8.30am (Yum Yum Lunch) or 9am (Pita Pit) 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.
COMMUNITY DENTAL SERVICE
The mobile dental unit will be on site at Pāpāmoa Primary School during Term 1.
The dental team will be seeing the most overdue tamariki/children during this visit.
The dental team will notify the whānau and families prior to their tamariki’s dental appointment.
When you receive this notification, please contact the team to update any contact details, confirm medical details or renew permissions for examination and dental x-rays.
Current service demands and delays weigh heavily on our teams and your kindness and support is appreciated.
If you have any queries or urgent dental concerns, contact 0800 Talk Teeth for further help and advice.
CHANGE OF DETAILS
In the event of an emergency, sickness or injury we need to be able to contact someone who can collect your child.
MEDICATIONS
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".
Contact Details
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/