Chelsea School BoT Newsletter

Dear Parents and Guardians,

We hope this letter finds you well as we near the end of the first term. As the Board of Trustees for Chelsea Primary School, we are committed to ensuring that our school continues to provide the best possible education for our students. We want to assure you that our primary goal remains to provide a safe and stimulating learning environment for our students. We are proud of the dedication and commitment of our teachers and staff, who continue to work tirelessly to ensure that our students receive the best education possible. In this regard, we would like to thank you for your continued support in making our school community a great place for our children to learn and grow.

However, we are writing to you today to discuss a matter of great importance to our school community: school voluntary donations. As you may know, school donations are an essential source of funding for decile 10 schools like ours. These donations help to fund vital resources and programs that are not covered by government funding.

Unfortunately, in recent years, we have seen a decline in school donations. This is a concerning trend as it directly impacts our ability to provide the best possible education for our students. The lack of donations may mean we have to make difficult decisions around which resources and programs we can fund moving forward.

We want to take this opportunity to remind our community of the importance of school donations. Every donation, no matter how small, makes a significant difference to our school. We appreciate that times are tough for many families, but we ask that you please consider donating if you are able to.

We would also like to take this opportunity to highlight the wider issue of funding for decile 10 schools in New Zealand. You might not be aware that every year there is a significant funding shortfall between money provided by the Ministry of Education and what is required to deliver our excellent educational programme. Our school has been running at a deficit for the past two years and this is not sustainable going forward.

Chelsea School is a decile 10 school, which means our school receives the minimum amount of government funding to operate. A low decile school could receive around $1,000 per student more than we do from the Ministry of Education. The Government’s reasoning is that schools in high decile areas have a greater ability to get donations and fundraising support from their communities than lower decile schools.

We rely on additional monetary support from families. These additional funds enable the Board of Trustees to deliver on its legislative objective to ensure that every student at school can attain their highest possible standard in educational achievement.

Additional funds help to provide:

Additional academic teaching staff.
Additional in-class teacher aide support.
Music, Te Reo, and environmental programmes.
Cultural and art activities within the school.
School trips and Senior school camp

We understand that this can be a sensitive topic, but we believe it is essential to raise awareness about the challenges that decile 10 schools face. We would encourage our community to reach out to their local MPs and advocate for fairer funding for all schools.

In closing, we want to thank our community for their ongoing support of Chelsea Primary School. We are committed to ensuring that our school continues to provide the best possible education for our students, and we appreciate your support in achieving this goal.

If you wish to make a donation, this can be done via Kindo or by making a payment at the office.

Ngā mihi,

Anita Hedges
Presiding Member

On behalf of the Board of Trustees
Chelsea Primary School