Term 2 Week 9 Newsletter#6

To Love/AROHA	To Learn/ĀKO	To Lead/ĀRAHI

St Joseph’s Catholic School

“Excellent Education befitting our Catholic Character”

94 Seddon St Pukekohe 2120

Term 2 Week 9 26 June 2025 Newsletter #6

Principal’s Message

Tena Koutou Katoa Talofa Lava Kamusta Malo e lelei Mauri Malo ni Faka talofa atu Namaste Greetings to all

This week we farewelled Mrs Jeannette Irwin. After 41 years service at St Joseph’s and at the age of 80, this remarkable woman has decided to retire. Although paid as a teacher aide for some hours, Jeannette gave so much more time to our students and our school. Most of the things she will be remembered for were done as a volunteer with a heart for any child who needed support, be that breakfast, lunch, clothing, or learning. Her love of gardening meant our children helped her to plant and harvest. These vegetables were sometimes made into soup or given away. The hall kitchen was another of Jeannette’s domains. She was a wonderful hostess, ruling the roost, for many functions. There are so many things Jeannette has done for us that we may have taken for granted, so next term will be a learning curve for those of us who remain.

It was lovely to see Mrs Irwin’s family, past staff, old friends, and some of our Mission Sisters (including her own sister) back in our school. With the missionary spirit of our Mission Sisters, Jeannette has been a wonderful example of Christ’s love for our children. We wish her many blessings as she continues her good work in another domain.

Matariki was another eventful week in our school calendar. We were thrilled with the attendance of our Grandparents’ Day last Thursday. We had over 200 visitors in the school. The liturgy and performance items were beautiful, bringing a tear to some grandparents’ eyes. It was lovely to see our Bollywood group and the Filipino Kids Choir, organised by Mrs Lane, perform. We were especially proud to launch our school waiata on the eve of Matariki. My gratitude always goes to my staff who step up above and beyond on these occasions, and to the parents who helped them. Where would we be without the support of our PTA & Friends and all the parents and whanau whose contribution was essential to its success.

The winter weather thus far has not been too harsh – wet and warmer or sunny days with bitter cold nights. Yet, there is still the bulk of winter to come. We are now past the winter solstice and, once again, our daylight hours will be coming longer. I hope you are able to have time over the holidays to recoup, refresh and spend quality family time together – more importantly, stay safe!

Until we catch up again in Term 3, God bless!

Nga manaakitanga ki a koe.

Special Catholic Character

School Assisted Mass – Sunday 8th June

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were together in one place… all of them filled with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2:1-4. What a beautiful celebration of the Feast of Pentecost we had. Our tamariki represented our school with pride and participated in every aspect of the Sunday Mass. The Psalm was led with beautiful actions, our prayers were shared in multiple languages and our readers and singers led with clarity. Thank you to Mrs Silvy Sutanto-Lane for your musical support. Also a massive thank you to the whanau who contributed to our bake sale. We raised over $1200 towards our Year 5&6 Camp.

School Values Awards

Anthony Helu – Arahi & Aroha
for stepping up and leading a prayer at Mass at very short notice

Key Dates

Term 3 Key Dates

Please note these dates are subject to change For further dates see calendars on the website at: www.stjosephs.co.nz or the eTAP app

School Board

MESSAGE FROM THE BOARD

This year the St Joseph’s School Board will hold our triennial elections. There are five parent representative positions which must be filled. Now is the time to think about either standing for election or nominating someone who you think will represent you and your whanau.

Over the coming weeks, information will be sent home outlining the election process. The information will include the key dates for the election, how to nominate a person, a nomination form, and the criteria of who is not eligible to stand for the school board. Nominations will open Friday 18th July and close 12 noon Wednesday 6th August.

We look forward to welcoming our new board members to our team in term three.

INTRODUCTION TO SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS – ONLINE

Every three years all public schools in Aotearoa hold elections for their School Boards, and this is going to happen again in 2025.

The School Board is a key part of our St Joseph’s School because they do a lot of important things behind the scenes that while they may not be visible, are really important to keeping our school running.

Our School Board write our strategic plan, consult with our community about things that matter, make sure our finances are being spent wisely and ensure that we are giving effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi within our school.

Our board is made up of five parent vacancies, the Principal/Tumuaki, a staff rep elected by the staff, and four selected proprietors’ reps. The board needs to appoint a Returning Officer, who is responsible for the running of the election and we have appointed Election Pilot as the Returning Officer and for the election to be provided online. They have been assisting schools with elections for over 20 years and have been the only election provider accredited by the Ministry of Education to provide online election services since online elections started in 2022.

Important things like the nomination and voting forms will be sent to you by email directly by Election Pilot. If we don’t have an email address for you, don’t stress because Schooled Election Pilot will send these out to you by post so you won’t miss out.

There are a lot of rules around School Board elections that need to be followed and the main ones are the Education and Training Act 2020 and the Education (Board Elections) Regulations 2022. Your name and contact details have been provided to Election Pilot to enable them to deliver election services for our school as required by legislation. They will use your contact details for the provision of election services for St Joseph’s School only and your details will be deleted 60 days after the election date as required by legislation.

If you have any questions about the election process, then the best people to talk to are the team at Schooled Election Pilot. You can contact the Returning Officer directly on 0800 VOTENZ (0800 868 369) or election@electionpilot.nz.

We will continue to keep you updated through the various stages of the election process.

Our election date is Wednesday 10th September.

SCHOOL POLICIES

A link to our school policies can be found on our school website or through www.schooldocs.co.nz

Go to www.schooldocs.co.nz/
Click Search for your school
Start typing the school’s name (St Joseph’s School Pukekohe) and then select it from the dropdown list.
Enter the community username: stjosephspukekohe and password: mission.

In Term 2, the Board, staff and community are asked to review the following policies: Planning and Preparing for Emergencies, Disasters, and Crises (board), Communication During an Emergency, Disaster, or Crisis (board), Emergency Closure (board), Emergency Management, Disaster Management, Crisis Management.

If you would like to contact the Board directly at any time, please do so through our email address schoolboard@stjosephs.co.nz

St Joseph’s School Pukekohe Development Trust

The SJDT AGM and meeting were held on the 11th June. We welcomed interest from new parents interested in join our St Joseph’s School Development Trust. There will be an information evening on Wednesday 23rd July, 7:00 pm in the staffroom, for anyone who would like to know more.

Please register your interest with our principal Ursula Hall. principal@stjosephs.co.nz

At St Joseph’s, we know that regular school attendance is essential for every child’s learning and success. Our goal is for 80% of our students to attend school at least 90% of the time.

In addition to attending school regularly, it’s really important for our tamariki to be on time for school. When children arrive promptly, they don’t miss out on important morning prayer, greetings and guidelines for the school day. This helps them settle into their day feeling calm and ready to learn, setting a positive tone for everyone in the classroom.

This term, we’ve had 778 instances of students being late, which has included more than 30 students being late on several days. This represents more than an entire class being late on one day! We understand that sometimes unavoidable situations pop up, causing children to be late on rare occasions. However, we’d really appreciate it if whaanau could generally ensure tamariki are at school by 8:45 AM. Even better, arriving by 8:30 AM gives them that valuable time to greet their teacher and friends, get organised and prepared for a great day of learning!

School Notices / Upcoming Events

Term 2 School Attendance Dues are now overdue!

Dues should be paid by Week 5 of every term into our

ASB account: 12-3023-0338374-01 ref: student’s name

These can also be paid at the school office by eftpos or cash.

Thank you to the families who have made the effort to get their dues paid.

The Catholic Character Contribution is a voluntary contribution forwarded to the Catholic Education Services Board. The St Joseph’s Development Trust Contribution is a voluntary contribution which the Trust is extremely grateful to receive. This is used in our school for improvements to our site and facilities. Both of these voluntary contributions are tax-deductible.

School Start Time

Students are expected to be at school by 8:30 am. Teachers are not in class until 8:15 am.

Parents, you need to ensure your child is at school by 8:30 every day. Thank you.

Please note that any children who arrive at school before 8:15 are not supervised.

Some children are arriving at school before 8:00 am!

Second-Hand Uniform Shop

The Second-hand uniform shop and office will be open in the holidays on Thursday 10th July from 10:30 am – 1:30 pm. We are limiting purchases to 1 item of each article of clothing per child, per term.

New items can be purchased from The Uniform Shoppe on Glasgow Road, Pukekohe

Road Safety Update

You will have noticed that we have had an increase in police presence over the last few weeks outside our school during drop-off and pick-up time. If you have parked on a yellow line they are issuing tickets. The police do not need to speak to you, they can just take a photo with your licence plate and a visual of the yellow line and a ticket can be issued. The yellow lines are there so that our road patrollers have appropriate vision to see on-coming traffic. It also allows approaching cars appropriate vision of the crossing. Please help to keep all of our students and family safe when crossing. Staff have also been told by the police to take photos of cars illegally parked eg on yellow lines and over drivers. We do not want to have to take this step, however, we do want all our students safe.

Understanding Your Child’s Learning

As you may be aware the Ministry of Education has released a new “Parent Portal” where you can find practical videos, activities and resources to support your child’s learning. You can access it here.

https://www.education.govt.nz/parents-and-caregivers/schools-year-0-13/understand-your-childs-learning/new-zealand-curriculum-year-by-year-learning-guide

Celebrations

Grandparents’ Day

What a pleasure it was to host over 200 special adults for our annual Grandparents’ Day. We began the day with a very touching liturgy dedicated to all the Grandparents, prepared by our Year 6 students. Next, as a tradition for Matariki, we honour and remember those who have passed away since the last rising of the Pōhutukawa star. This star holds tight to our memories of treasured people who have passed on. Thank you to everyone who contributed photos and their special memories. After out time of remembrance, we treated our special guests to three different performances. The theme for Matariki this year is about inclusion and diversity and what better way to honour this theme than by showcasing Bollywood Beats Dance Group, the Filipino Kids Choir and our Kapa Haka Group. Thank you to the teachers and parents who prepared the children so beautifully for these.

St Joseph’s School Waiata

This term our Kapa Haka Roopu and the wider school have been working with Matua Paulie Manuel. Paulie is Nikau Tamatea’s uncle. A couple of years ago, the Māori whānau at school started talking about wanting our own school waiata that we can sing and will tell our story. There was lots of enthusiasm, but no one had the musical skill to be able to put our story to song in te reo. In February, Bodee, Nikau’s dad, offered his nephew Paulie to help support us. Paulie met with Whaea Shellee, Mrs Burns, Mrs Hall and Bodee to discuss what we wanted. As a former Catholic student himself, Paulie knew he was up to the mahi and wrote the music and lyrics for our very own school waiata.

The waiata is based on the importance of our school values, to love, to learn and to lead, the importance of giving all our glory to God and the holy trinity. It acknowledges that our school is in Waikato Tainui and that in Pukekohe we are blessed to have such rich, fertile soil to feed and nourish us all.

We have also been extremely blessed that Mrs Wilcox’s son, Jackson, was able to create backing tracks for us, so we will always sound polished and professional.

We are very proud of this waiata and were very excited to debut it to our school community on Grandparents’ Day. This will be a taonga that we will be able to treasure for years to come. The next step in this journey is to create a video to share that will have the lyrics to the waiata with translations so everyone will be able to sing along and know how very special the words are to our school.

Wacky Hair Day

On Tuesday we had our Wacky Hair Day. What creative and cool designs. This was a very fun and colourful day. We raised $306.00 for the RNDM Mission Sisters well done!!

Mrs Irwin’s Big Day

Yesterday, we celebrated Mrs Irwin’s 41 years of service at St Joseph’s School. The day began with a Thanksgiving Mass followed by a morning tea for invited guests. We then had a children’s assembly presenting her with gifts from the students and staff. As a thank you to the students, Mrs Irwin provided a sausage sizzle lunch for all students. This was very much in-line with Mrs Iwin’s missionary spirit – always making sure the children are fed. We have been so blessed to have had Mrs Irwin be part of our school and thank her from the bottom of our heart for the time, love and energy she has put into St Joseph’s School for 41 years.

Aroha

In week 7 Aroha proudly presented the school assembly and taught the rest of the school what they had been learning about Jesus. What an exciting week Aroha had last week with Matariki rotations to different classrooms and fostering Tuakana-Teina relationships. There were some lovely connections built after this and some beautiful artwork created too. Making fry bread with Mrs Irwin and Mrs Murphy was also an exciting part of the week as we celebrated Matariki. Grandparents were eagerly welcomed into school for a lovely Grandparents Day and the children were proud to show them what they get up to at school. Wacky hair day was a great way for some of our students to express themselves and a fun way to prepare for the school holidays.

Ako

Last week, Ako Team enjoyed learning all about Matariki. Each class had the special opportunity to make Paraoa Parai (Fry Bread) with Mrs Irwin and Mrs Murphy—thank you to these wonderful ladies for sharing your time and skills with us! We were fascinated to see how the yeast rises and activates, and loved watching the dough float to the top of the hot oil as it cooked. As part of our Matariki celebrations, we’ve also been creating beautiful Matariki-inspired kites in our art sessions.

Arahi

During week 7, our Year 4 students visited the Year 6 classroom to collaborate on a beautiful Pentecost art activity. We explored the meaning of Pentecost—the moment the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles and expressed their understanding through vibrant artwork. It was a wonderful opportunity for tuakana-teina learning, with older students supporting the younger ones as they reflected on the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Our St. Joseph’s Rugby team competed against local schools with great spirit and determination, delivering an outstanding team effort that led us to a well-deserved first-place finish.

Arahi Speeches

This term the entire Arahi team prepared and delivered speeches to their classes. For some students this is a massive achievement as speaking in front of their peers can be very daunting. From the class speeches, 20 students were chosen to compete and this was then narrowed down to 12 students to compete in our annual School Speech Finals. The speeches were informative and entertaining and a pleasure to listen to. We were so proud of all of you!

A big congratulations to Leanne 1st, Tessa 2nd and Johnny 3rd!!

Community Notices

KICKSTART BREAKFAST

Come along and join our Kickstart Breakfast Club! A great way to fuel your day &

connect with friends! Let’s make every morning count!

Breakfast (Weetbix) in our Hall Kitchen is available from 8am-8.45am Monday – Friday

NZ MODERN SCHOOL OF MUSIC NEWS

The NZ Modern School of Music held their 46th Annual Counties Music Competitions on 6 and 7 June 2025. The piano and keyboard students of St Joseph’s did extremely well and walked away with one trophy and numerous medals and certificates.

Jake Williams won the Murphy Trophy for Keyboard 8 years and under. He also won a silver and a gold medal in the keyboard competition and another silver and gold in the piano competition.

This year was Nadine Alyasiri’s first competition and she entered in both the Keyboard and Piano competitions. She walked away one gold, two silvers, two Very Highly Commended certificates and one Highly Commended certificate.

Adeline Shields won a gold medal for the test piece and a silver for her own choice piece: “Waltz of the Toys”.

Leanne Domingo won two silver medals and one bronze and Gabrielle Heaton won a gold medal for her performance of “A little dance’, as well as a bronze medal and two Highly Commended certificates.

The rest of the results:

Isabella Summerville – Silver and two Very Highly Commended certificates

Rosalinda Emelio – Bronze medal, Very Highly Commended certificate and a Highly Commended certificate

Aeros Mabatid – Bronze medal, Very Highly Commended certificate and a Highly Commended certificate

Desiree Fermin – Bronze medal and a Highly Commended certificate

Marjiam Pena – Bronze medal and a Highly Commended certificate

Lita Aiavao – Bronze medal and a Highly Commended certificate

This was the first time Maia West and Liam Mulvany entered the competition and they both won Bronze medals.

Hana Aiavao – three Very Highly Commended certificates

Jack Edmonds – two Very Highly Commended certificates

Eoin Pile – one Very Highly Commended certificate and one Highly Commended certificate

Hannah Logan – Very Highly Commended certificate