Principal's Comment

 Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

This morning we were visited by the extremely talented Mr Robert Wilson who bought the scale model he has made of The Castle to school for us. Taking nearly 700 hours and 8 months, Mr Wilson has built this exact model replica of the Castle using MDF and 3D printing techniques. The model is absolutely phenomenal and will eventually be for sale. It is perfectly detailed even down to having the exact number of bricks of the real thing! Kara will post more detailed photos on our facebook and Alumni pages of this very special piece of Art.

This week has seen some wonderful sporting achievements with our cricket team finally breaking the drought and winning the local senior competition and our rowing teams have been doing very well at the Maadi competition. This Sunday and Monday we will continue the theme as we hold our Catholic Senior Quad tournament. I would like to thank Ms Clapperton for the massive amount of work she has done to bring this event to fruition.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the passing of Mr Barry Rusbatch who is the husband of our Business Manager, Colleen. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family at this time.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.

 God Bless

Jo Walshe

Principal's Comment

 Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

The day started early for me today as I attended the farewell breakfast for our Maadi Cup Rowers which was held in the Galley cafe on the waterfront. It was a great privilege to watch the dawn break in this beautiful part of the world in the company of so many driven, diligent and dedicated people; as coaches, students and whānau all gathered to wish our North Otago teams the very best of luck.

It has been a rich and varied sporting week this week as our Volleyball players once again had fantastic success at the Aoraki Championships and our Cricket First XI anticipate what must surely be finals glory this weekend! I would like to thank Ms Clapperton, Mrs Laragua, Mr Hose, Mr Smith and Mr Fowler for the tireless work they do in ensuring that these codes are supported and that our students get exposure on the regional and national scenes.

Finally, I would like to pass on to whānau a message from the Catholic Education Office. As you will know, school fees are due 31st March. At $950.00, the charges for St Kevins College is one of the lowest fees for a Catholic secondary school in the country. This fee covers the costs that the government does not cover with regards to the non - integrated aspects of our school. St Kevin's College does not collect this money, this is collected by the Dunedin Diocese. If you are having issues with payment or if you need to make arrangements to pay this fee over time, please contact the Dues Office as soon as possible at the following email or phone number:

Email: dues@cdd.org.nz or telephone 03 2220006 

The Catholic Education Office is more than happy to work with you to develop a payment plan that will make paying these fees far more painless.

Thanks to my gorgeous Year 9 models for this great picture of Science class.

Have a great weekend.

God Bless

Jo

Principal's Comment

 Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

I have a mixed bag of news this week, so thought I would share this amazing picture of our College taken from the Redcastle Door by our Alternative Education Learning Assistant Lorena Marshall. Lorena has taken many of the pictures we have used in our marketing materials over the past few months and I think you will agree she has an extraordinary gift for capturing the beauty we are surrounded with here at the College. I would like to thank her for sharing her gifts and talents with us.

Covid has continued to spread through the College this week with our having ten students away as confirmed cases today and one staff member with the virus. Thank you for your vigilance in testing and for your communication around absences.

On Thursday 16th March, our staff members who are part of the PPTA union will be going on strike along with their primary school colleagues. This industrial action is in response to a breakdown in their collective bargaining for this round. The School Board has opted to remain 'open for supervision'. This means that we will be technically open if you need a place for your students to be on Thursday if they are under the age of 14 and do not have anyone to supervise them at home. There will not be any instruction provided, as we will only have a skeleton staff on board of teachers who are not in a union or members of other unions. If anything changes in this regard next week, we will let you know.

On Wednesday, we farewelled Father Wayne from our College as he moves into retirement. All of our students took the opportunity to express their gratitude to him for his service. We wish him all the best for the future.

We launched the 'Whānau Reading Initiative this week, keep a lookout for that on social media and in the notices to find out what it is all about.

God Bless

Jo.

Principal's Comment

Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

As we head into the middle of the first term, I thought I would take this opportunity to update you on our Strategic and Annual planning and what that means for our priorities moving forward. Firstly, thank you to those of you who responded to my survey last year about our proposed Strategic Plan, having community voice is important for us as a College to ensure we are on the right track.

Our Strategic and Annual plans can be found on our super new website under "policies" along with our complaints policy and child protection policies.

In a nutshell our strategic plan over the next five years focuses on the following three things:

1. Ensuring our Special Character is implemented not only as church based teaching and learning, but that we take our understanding of the message of Christ into everything we do through our FIRE values. That means we don't just talk about being good people, we actively try to practice forgiveness, generosity, compassion and patience in our dealings with young people and their families and that we passionately and unreservedly stand up for what we believe is right, even if that ruffles feathers now and then, or even causes conflict.

2. We will focus on ensuring that our students leave school with the academic skills to manage themselves in our increasingly complex world and that our systems will not stop them from reaching their full potential. This means being as flexible as we can to developing courses and opportunities that develop the whole person.

3. We will implement the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum in a way which promotes community well being, understanding and togetherness. We see the curriculum as a call to all of our community to become familiar with the indigenous history, people and customs of our region so that we can better understand all of our individual places in the history of this land and in our own equally valued stories. These understandings are essential if we are to move respectfully into the future and meet the challenges it presents.

This featured picture is from our swimming sports last week. Well done to everyone who participated!

Have a great weekend

God bless

Jo