Tena koutou te whānau o te kura Muritai

We are nearing the end of the year and the pace is as hectic as ever. We have the Carnival this weekend. Planning for 2011 is high on our agenda, alongside exciting new plans to improve our learning environment.

Firstly though we would like to welcome Craig Griffiths onto the Board of Trustees. “Griff” as he is more commonly known is a long term Eastbourne resident and will be known to many, having been actively involved in Eastbourne Rugby Club and the Eastbourne community generally for some years. Like fellow trustees Olivia and Lisa, Griff is a Muritai Old-Boy and his children Lily and Tom, who are in years 4 and 2 respectively are 4th generation Muritai students. We look forward to working with him and thank him in advance for volunteering his time and energy. We still have two places on the Board and we will seek to fill these in the New Year.

This weekend we have our Eastbourne Village Carnival. This is a huge event for our school community and a chance to show what our little school is made of. A wonderful and spectacularly hard-working group of parents have taken on the leadership of the carnival, building an effective team in the process. We thank them for their commitment and appreciate all the work that has gone into planning a wonderful day. Please get along on Sunday if you possibly can and invite all your friends. The more people come, the more money we raise and every little bit counts.

The Carnival continues to raise money for our much needed new school library. The Board received a major setback earlier in the year with a policy change at the MOE significantly reducing our expected property funding for the next 5 years. Consequently our plans have had to be revisited but we are excited to be able to inform you that the architects have been in over the last few weeks and with the funds generated by the carnival this year we expect to be able to commence building in 2011.

In addition to this the Board is beginning to refresh the 2 storey classroom block and rooms 4,5,6 by replacing carpets, installing blinds, repairing windows, repairing or replacing heating, replacing wall linings and painting where necessary. The cost of this is close to $300,000. We hope to undertake much of this work over the Christmas break but, as funding is desperately short, we are hoping that some of the necessary works (particularly for example the window repairs and painting) can be undertaken by some of you donating your time. This will be a really practical way we can all help and if you are interested in being involved we would love to hear from you.

As a new Board we are constantly amazed at how Muritai School is able to offer so much with so little money. In spite of what Government press releases might suggest, schools are funded on the smell of an oily rag and it is a constant and difficult battle to provide even that which we are statutorily obliged, let alone anything more.

Which leads us to your voluntary donation. We budget to receive $95,000 on an annual basis. This year we have received just $83,000 and with three weeks to go the Board is faced with recording a substantial deficit for 2010. One of the particular characteristics of Muritai School, and reasons behind our success in student achievement, is our small class sizes. In other state schools around the country class sizes average up to 27 with classes routinely 30 or over. We can be completely transparent and say that your entire donation goes to provide additional teachers for our children. Regrettably if the budgeted figures are not received we will be forced to reconsider our ability to provide smaller classes going forward.

At our last Board meeting we discussed the school structure for 2011. Andrew will provide specific information later but we have staffed 2011 with classrooms as small as we can. Class sizes at this stage are as follows; – Year 1-2 (21); year 3-4 (21); year 5-6 (23) with year 7-8 (26-27). These extra classes place a considerable strain on both finance and property and at this stage we have nowhere to place the expected term 4 new entrant class. As a Board we will address that creatively at the time but to ensure we can staff these smaller classes we need payment of your voluntary donation. We will be phoning around those who have yet to contribute in the coming weeks to discuss any concerns or queries you have in relation to the donation but in the interim, if you have just ‘not gotten around to it yet’, can we encourage you that we urgently need your contribution as soon as possible.

We are also analysing the results from the community survey. The survey highlights some areas that we need to consider further and confirms that overall the school is in good shape. Once we have completed our analysis we will distribute the key findings and associated actions, or indeed areas on which we need to have further consultation / community discussion.

In the meantime, let’s keep our collective fingers crossed for excellent weather this weekend and we look forward to seeing you at the Carnival on Sunday.

Nga mihi nui ki a koutou katoa, ka kite ano.