11 February 2019

Newsletter Articles

Principals supporting Principals… Principals supporting Principles!

Kia Ora

Please find this week’s Monday Mailing below.

Welcome to week three. The first full week of the term.

It was good to hear the National spokesperson on education the other day say some good things about the Tomorrow’s schools review. We now need both of the main parties to come to some agreement on the recommendations they disagree on, so whatever party is in power will leave education to the educators.

It is not long till the Wairakei retreat. Have you booked? The numbers are limited.

Kind regards
Tony Mangan
Glenview School

WPA Dates

Wairakei retreat.

Wairakei Retreat - Connection Day Term 1-

After a successful Retreat in 2018, we are offering a similar experience for Principals only as our first Connections Day in 2019, this event will also include our Annual AGM.

We are lucky enough to have Andrew Jones from Melbourne University and Huddle Systems working with use around 5 different themes. For those who haven’t heard Andrew before, here’s his Bio and you will see he comes from a Principal background and really does know his stuff when it comes to leading education.

A full copy of the draft programme (timings won’t change) is attached to help with your planning. Please make sure you book for the Friday lunch if you wish to stay, there is no extra cost for this but we had many people disappear before lunch on Friday and we were charged for this. Please help us out by booking for Lunch if you are intending on staying.

Please choose between Shared or Single accommodation. We have 50 Rooms booked at Wairakei and it is a first in first served basis.

This year the cost for this event is;

Single $450 Twin Share $350

Teachers Council

One of our Executive Members Geoff Booth has been nominated to represent the Primary Principal's on the newly established Teachers Council of Aotearoa New Zealand. We believe it is important that we have local representation on the Council so let's get in behind Geoff and support.

Voting for the positions are being sent out shortly and are due to open early March. His profile can be viewed here:

Rant

We start the school year with many unknown’s in the future as the findings of the “Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce” starts to be released with many complications and fishhooks yet to be explored, let alone an unresolved Collective Agreement!

While there appears to be positive light at the end of the tunnel, with statements such as “Doubling our Management to equal that of High Schools” but there are some lights that could be the train about to hit us. The forming of Education Hubs could be a step back in time to Education Boards? who knows, for the Waikato it could mean 2 hubs serving 125 schools each. These hubs are meant to help service the needs of every school from property, Leaning support coordinators, appointment of staff, in-particular principals, help with governance issues such as Health and Safety, as well as take over processes such as suspensions.

The one thing we do need to be vocal about is the 5 year Tenure for principals. Anyone who has been in a principal position that has required change management knows the first 2-3 years almost kills you in terms of “looking under every rock” on work on implementing new systems and strategies to improve outcomes for learners. If our Tenure is only 5 years, how are we meant to cement practice in this time?

What about our families, for a large area like Waikato, you could easily be expected to move to a new school after 5 years that could easily be 200km’s away from your housing. For me personally, I’ve worked hard to position myself to ensure my kids have been able to attend a fantastic local High School. I’m currently 4 1/2 years into my principalship at Cambridge East Primary School, when does the 5 years kick in? does that mean I have 6 months left? how does my current contract get taken over by the Hub? They say the Hub is going to have an appointment panel that is 50% of “Educationalist”, where are these Hub people coming from? current MOE employees (some of them could be called educationalist with their backgrounds) or are Principals going to be seconded into the Hubs?

These are all questions we need more answers to but we need to heard, especially around employment issues as our current negotiations could be in vein if we all have to re-apply for our positions under a new contract working for local Hubs!

Hope you have had a great start to the year and I’ll take some big breaths and carry on, look forward to catching up soon.

Ngaa Mihi

Hamish Fenemor
Waikato Principals’ Association
President
07 827 7651
027 450 8774

WPA AGM

The current executive have motions to put to the group around the elections of the Committee, especially of the position of President. I want to make it very clear, this is the groups view not Hamish Fenemor’s as it does affect my current position.

With elections for the committee now taking place every 2 years, it's out of sync with the President election. The committee wishes to put forward a change to constitution to allow the committee, just like a school board, to choose their president rather than having a separate election. So the options would be;

1. Status Quo, separate election of the president or
2. Change to the committee elects the president after elections take place every 2 years.

There is a slight hitch, if we go for a new model, technically our President elections is meant to take place this year but if we vote for change, this would mean a president might only have a 1year term. I'm happy to do a one year, term if that helps get things into alignment but if people are wanting a change to our president, I’m more than happy for that to happen as well.

We will be sending information this term to help everyone have their say and help shape what this could look like to ensure everyone has the chance to vote on these changes before we get to the AGM.

Request from colleague.

Cricket - Intermediate Hardball

Anyone school wanting to combine with Hamilton West School to play hard ball cricket - Div 3 please contact mark@hamwest.school.nz

We need 5 or 6 players

Laugh

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