First Day of Summer

Friday was a great day. 16 staff started off with three hours of AsTTle training and I snuck off with one of the wahine to buy a present for one of our long-serving staff members - 37 years of teaching at our school! We had to buy a great coffee at the 2Fish while the present was being wrapped! He'll love the gift. Then had what I thought was going to be a difficult meeting with 2 staff members who have to work together but were finding it difficult to get along. With the support of wahine number 1 I feel we made great progress. Thankfully it was quite a non-eventful afternoon and I was able to finalise my ancillary staffing for next year. We get $105,000.00 to staff teacher aids for special needs students but I need to spend $117,000.00 to employ those that I need. It doesn't compute! Just as the day ended we heard that Ernie Hopa had died after a bit of a battle with cancer. He made an outstanding contribution to education in our region. After a couple of quick beers with some staff I headed home for a coffee because I had the Year 13 end of year party to go to. Went out to the Year 13 party at Hamish's with a bit of reluctance but once there really enjoyed it. Got Leigh and Sam to pick me up at about 11.30.