Update 6 March - School is one of the safest places your children can be

Mauriora koutou. I hope that you have had a good weekend and have managed to relax somewhat.

Tomorrow we meet with the structural engineer and our Project Team to discuss what will happen with our two most damaged blocks. I am hopeful that at this meeting we might be able to get an idea of a timeline towards reopening.

Our staff is meeting for lunch off site tomorrow. This will be our first get together as a staff since the earthquake and I will be thanking them on our parents behalf, and as a parent of Freeville School myself, for their outstanding work on the afternoon of the quake. They were all amazingly calm in what was a highly stressful situation. I find it quite incredible that we had only two minor injuries (a bumped arm and a skinned knee). Honestly we have more injuries in a normal playtime. There are 70 000 school children in Canterbury and I have heard of no serious injuries inflicted on any children who were at school. School is still one of the safest places that your children can be - and I think we need to remind ourselves that fact.

Depending on the discussion tomorrow I am hopeful that we may be able to have adults on site on Tuesday. This will allow us to tidy the undamaged rooms and plan for the recovery of resources from the damaged spaces on Wednesday. This will depend on the structural engineer.

Our staff will be brainstorming some options for getting school going while we wait for our relocatable classrooms to arrive and be made ready for use (about 25 days). There is no way we are waiting that long before getting underway so will be discussing how we can be creative with the spaces that we have like the hall and our two spare classrooms R16 and R13.

I'll update you tomorrow evening on how the day and the discussions and decisions go.

Nga mihi ki a koutou. Keep safe.

John