News Letter

This notice has been mailed and posted via WhatsApp to parents. If a parent has not received the notice please consult at admin@holycrosshigh.co.za

Newsletter                                                                               23/4/2021

Dear parents, can you believe we have reached the end of term 1. Reports have been issued to all learners and we encourage you to make enquiries should your daughter not present her report to you. We will also gladly email any reports on request to admin@holycrosshigh.co.za

Below follows a brief recap of the term.

General

All our seniors were welcomed back on a permanent basis with our junior students alternating as per 2020. It has been great to have them back with us on a full-time basis!

We intend to extend the fulltime schooling to our grade 8 situs judi parlay learners who will be joining us full time from term 2.

Grade 9 learners will still be alternating as per term 1. We hope to move them to fulltime once we have secured the venues and their compliance with COVID 19 protocols.

Our above plans are always within Covid 19 regulations.

Staff

Term 1 had us welcome three new staff members into our family.

Mr V Kawadza – Mathematics

Miss K Classen – Music, Creative Arts and Technology.

Mr S Bester – Maintenance.

IT

Our current level of technology is on an outstanding level and our learners benefit daily from it. To adhere to Covid restrictions regarding venue numbers we have been able to apply a technology solution that allows us to reach all our learners to ensure a comprehensive education experience.

We have a cable network that ensures lightning-fast network accessibility for cabled devices complemented by a Wi-Fi network that blankets the whole school. At any given time, there are between 300 – 500 active devices on our network using MAXBET resources. Within the Admin building and Computer Science block there are two major network hubs similar to what is found in large corporations, the B Block and Spirit centre have smaller network hubs to facilitate traffic within their buildings. All these hubs complemented by backbone connections with redundancy to ensure connectivity. Within these hubs we have 11 layer 2 – 3 switches managing network traffic with 13 access points with plans in place to increase the amount of wireless access points to improve wireless network speeds. Every class has a wired network camera in it to ensure Covid compliance and the safety of your daughters.

Octotel as the backbone and RSA Web as the ISP have provided us with a 1 gig internet connection that serves staff and students fantastically. On average the school as students and staff use 600 gig of Data a week. As part of our IT initiative, we provide uncapped data to the learners to facilitate our online presence. Monitoring does occur and restrictions are placed on devices to prevent misuse of the system.

Multiple online collaboration platforms are being used at the school to provide the staff and learners with mediums for education that are comfortable, easy, efficient, and comprehensive to use. As with anything new there will always be a learning curve with new technology but our learners and staff have progressed in leaps and bounds to show marvellous proficiency in their endeavours.

We just extended on our Covid 19 technology plans in term 1. We are at the forefront of education through technology.

Maintenance Projects.

The maintenance projects for the term went well.  We gave our learner bathroom a facelift. Our girls where really impressed by our new colour scheme and mirrors.

We started with an upgrade on our current laboratories – we are very excited about this project. This is a huge improvement with only the future of our learners in mind. Despite recycling used items and furniture we are managing a significant facelift of the lab facilities at the school. We believe that science subjects should be learnt through experiences in real life and in Term 2 a new life will be blown into this notion.

Leadership:

We are very excited to introduce our new leadership team, our 2021 student leaders.

The school voted and we are proud to announce the following student leaders.

Student Leaders:

• Okuhle Nogaga
• Rosie Kitenge
• Bontle Jubeju
• Tess Chizimba
• Jemimah Crewe
• Shareefah Dawood
• Simamkele Matsolo
• Trevina Hardenberg
• Tahirah Hendricks
• Cwenga Mama
• Faith Lokombekombe
• Alice Matarise
• Khanyisile Mlobeli

Head Girl – Saskia Jacobs

Deputy Head Girl – Keamogetswe Maleka

Finances:

We are still experiencing low payment of school fees from parents. A huge thank you to those parents who have paid their school fees up to date.

We do however, still have many parents who are behind.

Please note, this has resulted in decreased Educator salaries.

Ethos:

There has been a lovely feel of communal spirituality in our activities this term.  We

found a way around covid to mark the most important occasions in the Christian calendar.

We held paraliturgies or services for Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, the sacred days of the long Easter weekend and, when we returned, the glorious feast of the Resurrection, Easter itself, which naturally included easter eggs for all.  What made it such a good experience is the wonderful spirit of participation and teamwork at all levels, staff as well as learners.

And now we have the exciting news of our outreach, well-timed for the winter months. At our Easter service we launched our own initiative called Loaves of Love to support well-known NGO Ladles of Love which feeds the hungry in Cape Town. We are urging our learners (and anyone else) to bring in loaves of bread (brown, if possible). For the sake of logistics gr8 on Tuesdays and gr9 to 12 on Wednesdays, but we will accept whatever comes in whenever.  Adding an element of fun, practicality and spirituality, we tell the girls to club together in groups to share the cost of a loaf. The groups may be in or out of school and may change as the pocket dictates. At school they hand in their loaf with a note listing those who shared in the donation and anything else they want to express confidentially between them and God alone.

We all look forward to Term 2 – Please rest well as we will be hitting the ground running.