Kia ora Parents and Caregivers,
As I am sure you are now aware, our school experienced a major IT incident over this past week. It has taken a team effort to get our systems back up and running and I’m grateful to everyone who has helped in the restoration. While we still have some work to do, we are pleased with the progress made. I want to thank you for your patience as we worked through email and phone issues – I know in those first 24 hours it wasn’t easy to get hold of us.
There was thankfully little disruption to our students’ classroom learning, and aside from one day of wifi outage, it was mostly business as usual for them. Being a school that extensively uses Google Classroom meant student work was safe and accessible – just as it was during lockdown. With wifi down, we were delighted to hear a very obvious increase in lunchtime chatter, as students talked to one another rather than being on their devices!
While this incident has been a big focus, the first two weeks of term have also reaped success – on our sports field, in music and academically. You can read more about these in this newsletter.
We also held a very successful Open Night on Tuesday 21 July. More than 1,000 people took the opportunity to tour Westlake, and we are now busily preparing for 2021 enrolments. It’s always great to see our current students proudly showing off their school, and we have received positive feedback about the energy and enthusiasm they exuded. Our Head Prefects and three of our Year 9s also did a great job speaking about their personal highlights and experiences to a packed gym – it’s not easy and I am proud of the way they showcased through words and actions the very best of our school.
We have our Parent Teacher Meetings on Wednesday 5 August, and the link to book times with your daughter’s teachers will be live from 3pm today. Please see “Important Things to Note – 31 July” for the link – or check your emails. With Junior Reports unable to be released, we are especially looking forward to meeting with you.
Kindest regards
Jane Stanley