Communicating with you

Keeping open and honest communication lines is essential to ensuring the partnership between school and home is strong.  As a staff, we endeavour to return correspondence or reply to phone calls within 24 hours - and staff are only expected to answer school emails between 8am and 5pm during week days.  It is not appropriate to make contact with staff about a school matter via their personal social media accounts or cell phones. 

 

As part of the enrolment process, all parents commit to ensuring they regularly engage with us and read the newsletters, emails and phone app notifications we share to stay informed.  Please ensure any changes to your contact details are notified to the office immediately.  

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Newsletters

We issue a whole school newsletter every Friday and you can find it on the Phone App, Hero, the website and our Facebook page.  We regard the newsletters as an important contact between school and community and this is reflected in the content and it’s important you read it and ensure you keep yourself informed.

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Phone app

It is essential that you download the Phone App - and setup subscriptions that are relevant to your family.  This link takes you to an article from our newsletter that explains how to get the app and get it set up.

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We use the phone app to share urgent messages and reminders as well as sports draw information.  If you don't have the phone app, you will be missing out on important information.   

 

You can use the phone app to send an absence notification as well as get easy access to our newsletter, urgent alerts and reminders, calendar, term dates, sports draws / info and links to our website, Kindo and to Hero.  

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To get the app, go to The App Store or Google Play on your phone or device and search SchoolAppsNZ.

 

Click on the ‘get’ button, which will turn into ‘install’, and then click again to install. You may need to enter your password to the app store.

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When the app has finished installing click ‘open’. Then simply look for Pegasus Bay School... You can connect more than one school to this App (and our local high school - Kaiapoi High School also use it)

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The app will ask you for permission to send you push notifications. We’d advise you to select OK because this will enable notifications about alerts in the app.

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The app will ask you to select the alerts you want to subscribe to using a range of dropdown menus. If you’re not sure which ones you want to subscribe for off the top of your head, or don’t want to do it right away, you can come back to it later.

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Seesaw for sharing learning

We use Seesaw to show the progress of our learners. This environment allows, students, parent and teachers to interact with students learning on an ongoing basis.

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Ask your child's home group teacher for access to Seesaw if you don't already have it set up. 

 

See our Reporting to you page for more information on our reporting system. 

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Kindo

Our school accounts, hat purchases, lunch orders and fundraisers are all done via your Kindo account.  

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For some items added to your account, you can pay them off over time (e.g. school donation, camps etc). For others, you need to pay upfront (e.g. school lunches, fundraisers and some trips) which means that you need to ensure your account is topped up before you make a purchase. 

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Visit our Kindo page to learn more about Kindo and to get setup.  

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Hero - Our student management system (SMS)

Hero is our student management system, and this is where you will find information relating to your child's progress at school.  See our Reporting to you page for more information on our reporting system. 

 

Click the green button to the right for more information about logging in and using Hero.

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We also share our weekly newsletter with you via Hero (as well as via the phone app, Facebook page and the home page of our website).  

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Whānau hui

Whānau Hui is usually held 3 times each term, check the calendar for dates. It is a whole school gathering where we have a mihi, karakia, acknowledge successes, share notices and highlight what will be happening over the week ahead.  You are more than welcome to attend.

 

School calendar

Our events calendar is available here and phone app.  Keep an eye on it so you can know what’s come up.  Often you can click an event and get more information.   ​