Tēna koutou e te whānau,

Welcome back to the 2025 School year. 

It was wonderful to see all of our tamariki returning to school yesterday. We began the day with a pōhiri to welcome our new staff and tamariki to our kura whānau. There were a lot of happy smiling faces and excitement. I would like to extend a warm welcome to our new students and their families who started school with us and all of our Year 1 children who had their first day of school.

Pictured above: Arataki School Pōhiri for our new tamariki, whānau and kaiako.

Yesterday we had two blessings. Our first blessing was for the opening of our Rumaki class. This year, Kopukairoa has extended to have one full immersion Te Reo Māori classroom which is taught by koka Rae. The blessing was to acknowledge that the classroom space has transitioned from a bilingual classroom into a full immersion Te Reo speaking class. 

Pictured above: Matua Reg joined with the MoE and Kopukairoa to open Akomanga 9 as our new rumaki class.

Our other blessing was for our Pātaka kai. Last year, the tamariki in Room 23 with help from Matua Mike built a Pātaka kai for our kura. You will see it on the Kaimanawa street entrance to our school. When we have spare fruit, this will be placed into our Pātaka Kai for our whānau to help themselves. In the past, it has been put in boxes on the footpath outside our gate.

Pictured above: Whaea Davidia blessed our new Pātaka Kai and Matua Mike was joined by Jade Smith (Y6 in 2024) to unveil their whakairo.

You may have seen in the media over the past week coverage of the changes to the lunches in schools scheme. I would like to reassure our whānau that the lunches for Arataki School are not part of the revised provider scheme for this year. Schools that are year 0-6 such as ours were able to continue to have the same lunch provider for one further year. Our school lunches are still continued to be provided by Freeport and we are grateful for the delicious lunches they deliver.

Finally, I would like to introduce our teaching staff and school organisation for the 2025 year to our community. In my next newsletter I will introduce our support staff and board members.

Reminder, school is closed on Friday 7th February and we will make this day up at the end of the school year. I hope you have a fantastic Waitangi day celebration and long weekend.

Ngā mihi nui, 

Vicki Hiini - Tumuaki

Click here for 2024 and 2025 Term Dates

COMMUNITY NOTICES

Play Time @ Arataki

PRE LOVED UNIFORMS

Needing a few pieces of uniform.  Come and see our pre-loved uniforms at the school office. 

Have your tamariki grown out of their uniforms? We are especially in need of Polo Shirts if you have any spare.

Please consider donating them back to the kura.  These uniform donations are:

• sold to our whanau for donations of $5. The money raised is used for resources for our classrooms. 
• used for our tamariki who may need them.

These donations are gratefully received at the school office.

Please remember to enrol your preschoolers as early as you can. This helps us to get prepared for their arrival.

To enrol you can click this link to the online application form or come into the office for an application pack.

For more information on enrolment check out our website www.arataki.school.nz

ATTENDANCE REPORTING