Principal's Report to the PTA - March 2009

Welcome to the 2009 PTA at Fendalton School. It has been a hectic start to the year, with Swimming Sports, Triathlons, Camps and the start of a few new projects for the staff.

This year the school is part of a Professional Development contract with the University of Canterbury, Literacy Team. The focus of this PD is writing, and it has already fired up some fascinating discussions amongst the teachers.

Alongside this whole school contract we are making some changes to the end of year reports for 2009. This will be a major focus for the year and a key element of this will be communicating our ideas with parents and asking for feedback. To this end, I am holding parents meetings to discuss the reports, starting tomorrow (7.30 in the Village). I will repeat this meeting next Tuesday at 2pm. I hope that this will be an opportunity for parents to express their thoughts about how we currently report on their children's progress and, more importantly, how we could do this better. It would be great to see a big turnout of parents for these meetings, so please spread the word.

Last year's hugely successful carnival was held to raise funds for our seating and shade project and this is ticking along nicely. We now have detailed plans, which the Arts team are looking at to decide the best way to include the children's artwork. Once this has been completed we will be ready to set up some dates for the work to begin. We do need the services of a structural engineer, so if anyone knows one, please could you point them in my direction?

Thanks,

Paul