School Culture

School Culture - the way we do things around here.

Respect - Kindness - Resilience - Integrity 

BACKGROUND:

We are a decile 7 community, which means we are pretty much in the middle of the ranking scale.  Schools with decile rankings 1-4 generate greater levels of targeted funding as they are deemed to be serving the communities of lowest socio-economic rankings. The difficulty with being in the middle bracket (decile 5-8) is that while the community has greater socio-economic ranking on the whole, there are pockets within your community that are not doing as well as others and struggle to make ends meet. 

Although we are on the North Shore, a part of Auckland considered to be wealthy and less needy than others, some of our families are struggling.  We work in an area of the Shore that is very high in rental properties, and this brings a stress to families who cannot be certain of the permanence of their accommodation, nor the cost of it over time as rental costs increase. There is also the increasing number of families that have less and less disposable income as a result of the prices facing home owners in the Auckland property market. People can feel shame about  living on the Shore and not coping, and that means they don't reach out for support.   We need to be a 'safe place to land' for our families, somewhere they can find support with whatever is going on in their lives.  

Our staff work hard at developing a positive and open relationship with our community.  We know that in order for our students to be successful we need to have whanau and school on the same page. We take the time to find our about our students, and initiate communication with whanau early on in the year, then maintain that with as many positives as possible over time.  This is not always easy as it requires a level of trust that needs to be developed over time, and many of these families are transient due to changes in their accommodation and employment situations.  By the time we become aware of a need, the family may well be moving again. In this case we try to speak confidentially to the next school to explain what issues may be facing the family, and keep in touch where we can.

Our school values are Respect, Integrity, Kindness and Resilience.  
We teach them, demonstrate them, talk about them, advertise them, reward the demonstration of them and share stories about them regularly with the whole school community.  They are central to our school behaviour programme and are a part of our school shared language.  These are also the values that we bring to relationships with our whanau and wider community, particularly when they are finding things tough or come seeking support or information.


ISSUES AND SOLUTIONS:

SYSTEMS: financial priorities and planning
Equity of access to events and activities is an issue for some of our families. We endeavour to give sufficient notice for families of upcoming evens, trips or activities in order to assist them with planning for these, and have a range of payment options in place to support that.  We have a culture in the school of fundraising to support those who need financial assistance to attend events, and to subsidise the overall cost to all.  We also have families who will quietly approach staff and offer to subsidise costs for families in need.  This has been a regular occurrence in our school for the last 4-5 years, and something that I believe shows the heart of the community.   
We are one of the last schools in Auckland that does not have a school uniform, and this has been supported by our community at every consultation undertaken in the last 10 years. This allows the children to present themselves as uniquely as they wish, and they do - we will often have the odd superhero or princess running around our playground.  It also means that families do not have the added cost of an expensive uniform to plan for at the start of each school year. 
We are not a school that chooses to look for income streams from uniform, stationery or a tuck shop.  We point our parents in the direction of the cheapest options we can find for these things, and at times providing resources if we can see it could help, including stationery and lunches.

STAFFING:
As the school principal my personal beliefs of equity, dignity and respect influence our policies and procedures.  My influence in hiring staff means I look for people who fit the culture and demonstrate similar beliefs.  While we may have (and should have) different strengths, skills and experiences, we need to commit to the same values so there is a sense of unity and purpose among the team. We sign a Code of Conduct, reviewed each year, that explicitly outlines how we will work with each other, our students and our community. 
We talk about modelling the behaviours we want to see in our children, and treating other adults (staff, parents, visitors)  the way we would want to be treated ourselves. 

                                                 

We are motivated by the memories of relationships in times gone past that were not respectful or honest, and work to ensure this does not become a part of our current reality or future. 

References:

Stoll, L  (1998)  School Culture.  University of Bath.

Ministry of Education (2016)    Retrieved from  http://parents.education.govt.nz/primary-school/schooling-in-nz/ministry-funding-deciles/