Leadership/Liaison >

Board of Trustees

	Mr Michael Corbett Chairman of the Board		Mr Grant Weir Deputy Chairman
	MrHans Konlechner Principal		Ms Cushla Close
	Mr Graeme Kelsen		Mr David Iggulden
	Mrs Sandra Sandford		Mrs Carol Chapman Staff Trustee
	Miss Jessica Arnold Student Representative

Students have a direct input into the running of the school through their representative on the Board of Trustees. This election was held early in Term 4, 2008. The successful candidate holds office for one year and must be elected from Years 10-13. The student representative this year is Jessica Arnold who replaces Steven Christodoulou

The Board of Trustees Report for 2008/9

2008 has been a year of positive progress for Hawera High School.

Programmes of work on Maori achievement, numeracy and literacy implemented in 2007 have shown strong positive trends, which can be attributed to the programmes of work established by the school’s senior management team and implemented by an increasingly motivated group of teachers.
From changes to the Year 9 term one induction model, literacy support with an emphasis on Maori achievement, to a successful 80 plus club, these and many other initiatives have seen the school progress. This progress is the building block we need to promote our vision of “School of Choice”. 

In October we were the subject of a three-yearly audit review by ERO. This was our first review since Paul Ryan became Principal. The Board requested that a priority for the review be “improving student achievement”.
The ERO report noted areas of good performance in teaching strategies, initiatives (e.g. Year 9 transition and targeted teaching) along with improvement in assessment and evaluation practices.  This was supported by positive comment on student engagement and the learning environment.

The school’s financial position will never be one of great strength, due to funding shortfalls, but prudent expenditure has ensured our 2008 accounts are within budget limits.
The school’s physical environment continues to improve with steady progress against our five year property plan. 

A brief summary of key points to note from each committee convenor follows.

Curriculum
Hawera High School continues to offer a wide range of subjects at all levels to students. It is very pleasing for a rural school like ours to maintain such a broad range. This is able to continue to happen through the positive input of our Heads of Department and teaching staff.
The academic results of the school are showing an upward trend over the last four years (see table below). This is due to a number of initiatives being implemented by staff, most recently being the ‘80+ Club’ at Year 11 (Level 1).
This programme identifies and targets a group of students who are likely to finish the year within the range of 60-79 credits (80 credits needed to pass NCEA Level 1) and aims to assist them to reach at least 80.

 NCEA % RESULTS – HHS/NATIONAL CO-ED COMPARISONS 2005-08

An ongoing challenge for the school is to maintain a full complement of trained/qualified staff. There was some turnover during 2008, but not on the scale of the previous year.

Finance
2008 saw the challenge of ensuring a small surplus occurred in the school’s end of year result. After two years of small deficits we had received correspondence from the Ministry requesting greater scrutiny on our expenditure. It is pleasing to report that following a deficit of ($24,495.00) in 2007, in 2008 we have a surplus of $101,741.00. The surplus was assisted not only by a slight increase in funding and agency but good control on expenditure.
Key areas of expenditure to hold against budget were:
                                                07                                08
Personnel                             ($95717)                    ($2237)
Property & Maintenance      ($37713)                    ($5178)

This result has put the school’s balance sheet on a more secure footing.
Thanks must go to the Senior Management staff and Executive Officer for ensuring control of expenditure.
Also in our second year of accounts from Education Services we are able to better analyse our income and expenditure at a cost centre level.

In the second full year of our 7 year property plan, we were able to complete a number of the projects listed therein. In addition to completion of the projects in progress at the end of the previous school year, the following projects (listed with their plan value) were either complete or well on their way at the end of the 2008 year.

In order to achieve our heating and IT project goals we discovered we needed to upgrade our power supply from a 300 to a 500 KVA transformer.  This done, we had to upgrade our mains power feed and some block switchboards.  Without this, we would not have been able to make use of our equipment without overloading our system.
The power upgrades meant we had to place a hold on some of our other planned projects, but placed us in a sounder position from which to move forward and enabled us to future-proof our power requirements as best we can.

People / Staffing
Hawera High school continues to have an excellent range of staff (teaching and non-teaching) that work positively to ensure the smooth running of the school and the best possible education for the students.
We had eleven new teaching staff arrive at the start of 2008. This group of new and experienced teachers have made a fantastic contribution to the life of the school – Mr Archer (Maths), Mr Chand (Maths), Mr Cressingham (English), Mr Smeaton (English), Miss Elston (Science), Ms Meyer (Science), Miss MacGilloway (Science), Mr Owen (Computing), Miss Williams (Japanese), Mrs King (Maori), Mr King (English, Social Studies, Farming).
At the end of the year we had a small number of staff leaving – Mrs Williams (French), Mrs Frengley-Vaipuna (Drama/English).
At the end of term 3 a long-standing teacher/Guidance Counsellor Mrs Luscombe left after many years of valued service to the students of the school.
This year we have established another joint-HoD role in the school within the Mathematics department (the other is in the Technology Dept).
We had some movement within the ranks of our non-teaching staff also. Mark Winter replaced Steve Coombe as caretaker, Renee Anderson and Denise Mouat replaced Cushla Fevre and Fiona Dilworth in the Gateways department. Michelle Taylor left her positions of careers assistant and office assistant.
The staff of Hawera High School continue to perform to a high standard to ensure the school operates at the best level possible.

Mike Corbett
Chairperson
Hawera High School Board of Trustees

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