Covid 19 Update

Moving to Orange

Kia ora koutou,

You’ll be aware that Minister of Education Chris Hipkins has announced the move to Orange at 11:59pm tonight.

Tahuna Normal Intermediate School will remain at a red level on Thursday the 14th to allows us time to do a full risk assessment over the holidays.

The decision to move to Orange has been made on public health advice and reflects that we are moving past the peak of cases and our health system is able to cope. We are seeing that cases are declining due to high levels of vaccination and natural immunity after infection.

I wanted to give you an update on what the move to Orange in the new term means for our school.

At Orange, face masks are no longer required at school. However public health advice is that masks continue to be strongly encouraged when indoors. Wearing a mask is a key health measure that slows the spread of COVID-19 in indoor settings. For that reason, we ask that visitors to the school, including parents and whānau, wear a mask whenever they are indoors on school grounds.

We also ask that your child continues to bring a mask to school every day. There may be times that we’ll ask them to wear a mask, too – for example, when we are having an assembly in the hall. If there are a high number of cases at school or in the community, we may ask that masks are worn in classrooms for a time.

At Orange, students aged 12 and above are still required to wear a face mask on school or public transport.

We will continue to keep all the other health measures in place at school that we know slow the spread of COVID-19. These include ensuring our indoor spaces are well-ventilated, maintaining good hand hygiene and cough and sneeze etiquette, appropriate physical distancing whenever we can and, most importantly, staying home if we are sick.

We are looking forward to a few less restrictions and returning to school life that is a bit closer to normal in the new term.

Ngā mihi,

Simon Clarke

Principal