1. Principal News Week 3 Term 3

Whitestone Learning and Change(LCN)Big Event

On Tuesday afternoon, the staff from Weston School, Papakaio School and St Joseph's united together to focus on aligning educational goals across our schools. Working together as part of the Whitestone LCN has meant that our schools firmly believe that collaboration is more important than competition. Collaboration to share our expertise and knowledge to benefit all of our children. Together and collectively we have the capability to achieve more for our learners and their families than individually. St Kevin's College and little Wonders are also part of our network of educational centres focussing on parent engagement and student agency (students driving their own learning).
You can learn more on the Whitestone LCN blog and by watching this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w2RYdZYAJo&safe=active
Special thanks to Maria Dickie who has been involved as a parent in the network from the beginning and came and participated in our session as well as kindly helped me to prepare for our visitors and clean up afterwards with our staff.

Board News
We are pleased to announce that Sharni Cunningham has been appointed to the Board of Trustees. Sharni has filled the parent trustee vacancy and will remain on the board until the next elections in 2016. Sharni is married to Gerard and has two daughters at St Joseph's Indya in Year 4 and Mackenzie in Year 6. Sharni has a wealth of experience to share in all areas, in particular, she will be an asset on the Grants Committee. Thank you to Sharni for stepping up to contribute to our school by taking on such an important role.

New Ministry of Education Parent's website
Our children have taken home bookmarks that provide information about this new site. You can access it here at www.parents.education.govt.nz
The goal of the website is to provide a central place to give you as parents and caregivers, information and answers to commonly asked questions in plain language so that you feel well equipped to engage in your child's education.

The Living Garden presentation on Friday
On Monday evening, a group of us attended a presentation about a new initiative from the community gardens. The Living Classroom (TLC) committee have the resources to visit our school once a week and help to set up and sustain our own school garden. Mr Jelgersma has built a long raised garden for us beside the new junior playground for the whole school to utilise. On Friday, representatives from the Community Gardens are coming to share a video and talk to us about their work. Everyone is welcome to come to our celebration kotuitui at 2:30pm on Friday and learn more about this initiative.

St Dominic's Day
Tomorrow we will be joining St Kevin's to celebrate St Dominic's Day as we are a Dominican school. Here is a special prayer for St Dominic's Day.