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ANNUAL REPORT OF

2015

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Introduction The purpose of this introduction to the reports given at the 2015 Annual Founders meeting of the Waldorf School’s (Bay of Plenty) Trust held on October 4 2016 is to provide information about the legal and structural context which the meeting addresses, for anyone who is interested.

Background. The Annual Founders Meeting has some aspects which resemble an Annual General Meeting as they are widely understood and experienced and some aspects which are unique. The founders meeting is a requirement of the Waldorf School’s (BOP) Trust Deed of Trust, which dictates the processes used and the content of this yearly event. At the annual meeting which is convened, under their Trust Deed by the WST, the duly audited annual accounts and balance sheet is presented and appointments of trustees is undertaken. As well an annual report is presented. As well as Founders and pioneers, the WST routinely invites the Tauranga Waldorf School Board of Trustees and the wider community of parents past and present to attend. Our practice in the last years has been to make our annual report in Four Sections: from the Kindergarten and School and then Finance and Property.

Glossary of Terms The Founders The original Trustees who set up the Waldorf Schools Trust and those subsequently enrolled by the founders. The Founders are responsible for the ongoing fulfilment of the Trust Deed. To ensure that their intent is protected as far as practicable, the Founders appoint the current Trustees.

Waldorf Schools Trust (WST) Founded in Tauranga in 1989 to establish education in the Bay of Plenty in accordance with the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. The WST is a signatory to the Tauranga Wlaodrf School’s Integration agreement with the Crown. This agreement makes the Wst responsible for providing the land, buildings and maintaining and developing the Special Character of the school. WST also has the role of supporting Anthroposophy in the Bay of Plenty. As mentioned above, the Trustees are appointed by the Founders, and the WST in turn reports to and is directly responsible, to the Founders. Rose Ring Kindergartens are not included in the School’s Integration Agreement. The WST with regard to the kindergartens acts as the Licensing Body and is wholly responsible for the funding, staffing and governance of the Rose Ring Kindergartens. Integration Agreement A contract between a private education provider and the Government, through which the provider (now to be called the Proprietor) transfers governance and management of the school, its buildings, land, staff and pupils, through the Ministry of Education to the State in exchange for the State assuming responsibility for the payment of salaries of the staff, the maintenance of buildings which the State deems to be of standard, and the teaching function of the school, in exchange for the Special Character of the school being maintained. The Proprietor remains the owner of the land and buildings, and is

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responsible for the construction of any additional or replacement buildings, and for ensuring that existing buildings meet the codes published by the Ministry of Education. The Proprietor is also responsible for the Special Character of the school, this aspect not being funded by the State. Waldorf Schools ( BOP) Trust entered into an Integration Agreement with the Crown in 2005. Our Special Character The School’s Special Character as a Waldorf School is defined through both Educational Delivery and Commitment. Educational Delivery: With an intention to support children to create connections with community, the natural world and to the spiritual values of reverence, wonder and gratitude, the school delivers rich cycles of connected learning experiences. Curriculum content and delivery is thereby an essential way the School’s Special Character is enacted. Delivered holistically, these facilitate children’s experiences of :

Learning in time and over time, Learning together and learning from each other Learning through the arts and learning on the land Learning throught the example of love, authority and respect. Commitment: With a mission of developing students who can stand as free individuals in and for the world, the Proprietor of the Tauranga Waldorf School, the Waldorf Schools (Bay of Plenty) Trust, undertakes responsibility for the delivery of a Special Character Waldorf education to any child whose parents truly seek it. Parents express their special character preference for Waldorf Education by agreeing to join the Proprietors in creating the conditions which allow a Waldorf Education to be delivered to all the children of the community. This responsibility is enacted by parents through a kaupapa of belonging and contribution and includes a commitment to: Taking part in the special character establishment processes designed to address their situation and ensure they can cherish, and actively support a Waldorf Education being delivered to the children;

Gifting, as a means of transforming economic and practical realities;

Respectful and purposeful communication via the School’s Communication protocols and pathways

as the basis of a healthy community life and

Pro-active support of the educational process of all tamariki, with support and guidance from the College of teachers.

Teachers, supported by the Proprietors and backed by parents and whanau:

Operate within the five defined Dimensions of the School’s Special Character as a Waldorf School.

Take responsibility for the cultural and spiritual life of the school through membership of the College of Teachers.

Commit to ongoing study and a path of inner development.

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Waldorf Education Waldorf or Rudolf Steiner education is based on an anthroposophical view and understanding of the human being, that is, as a being of body, soul and spirit. The education mirrors the basic stages of a child's development from childhood to adulthood, which in general reflects the development of humanity through history from our origin, far back in past times up to the present.

The central focus for the Waldorf teacher is the development of that essence in every person that is independent of external appearance, by instilling in his/her pupils an understanding of and appreciation for their background and place in the world, not primarily as members of any specific nation, ethnic group or race, but as members of humanity and world citizens.

Thus, the Waldorf kindergarten cultivates and works in support of the pre-school child's deep, inborn natural attitude, belief and trust in and basic reverence for the world as an interesting and good place to live in. In the primary school classes, this leads over to more of a stress on using artistic elements in different forms (rhythm, movement, colour, form, recitation, song, music), not primarily as a means of personal self expression, but as a means to learn to understand and relate to the world, building an understanding for different subjects out of what is beautiful in the world in the broadest sense of the word. Board of Trustees (BoT) By virtue of the school’s Integration Agreement with the Crown, and in line with the provisions of Private School’s Conditional Integration Act and the Education Act, Tauranga Waldorf School, as a state integrated school is required to have as well as a Proprietors Trust, a second governance body via a Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees is required to be made up of five parent elected trustees, the school principal, a staff elected trustee and up to four representatives of the school’s proprietors. The BoT of a state integrated school is responsible to the Ministry of Education for the employment of staff, appointment of the Principal and some aspects of the governance of the school, ensuring that the school meets the standards of education required by the Ministry, most importantly in the area of student achievement and wellbeing. The BOT of Tauranga Waldorf School works closely with the WST to ensure that the physical development of the school dovetails with the needs of the College of Teachers and the Ministry. Similarly, the Tauranga Waldorf School’s policy framework, curriculum and employment and enrolment procedures are all required to operate within the school’s special character. College of Teachers (CoT) The College of Teachers is the spiritual centre and heart of the school and is made up of those teachers who are willing and able to be co-responsible for the health and wellbeing of the school and kindergartens at every level. The College of Teachers in a Waldorf School operates within Steiner’s ideas about freedom and responsibility and belonging and contribution. Steiner’s vision for a College of teachers was as a permanent teacher training academy where through collaboration and study, groups of teachers would learn to identify and respond to the needs of the children in their care. The CoT maintains an overview of all the children in the school and kindergarten therefore and undertakes studies of students to share and further their knowledge. Our CoT is active in all interests of the school and is consulted on all matters relating to development and the Special Character. Currently the school principal is the College representative on the WST.

http://www.waldorfanswers.com/Anthroposophy.htm

http://www.emersonwaldorf.org/?s=curriculum&ss=early%20childhood

http://www.emersonwaldorf.org/?s=curriculum&ss=lower%20school

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The Federation of Steiner/ Waldorf Schools in New Zealand (The Federation) The body which represents all the New Zealand Waldorf Schools, creates our national network and connection to the international Waldorf movement. Responsibilities include negotiating with Government in respect of the various integration matters, with the Ministry of Education in respect of curriculum and the interweaving of Special Character, and providing advice to all the participating schools. A member of the Association of Integrated Schools which covers almost all of the integrated schools in New Zealand including Catholic, Anglican and Waldorf and more. Rudolf Steiner (1861 – 1925) A man of remarkable talent born in Austria and, shortly before his death targeted by Adolf Hitler to whom he was outspokenly opposed. He was a teacher, a philosopher, and architect (three of his surviving buildings have been listed amongst the most significant works of modern architecture), an author, a playwright, an artist, one of the earliest architects of organic farming and the source of anthroposophy – which is a form of spirituality based in science and the natural world. His first school was established to educate the children of the workers in the Waldorf Cigarette Factory, and followed his educational philosophy developed through his previous experience and observations – and hence the term Waldorf Schools. There are now over 1,000 Waldorf schools around the world. Anthroposophy A formal educational, therapeutic, and creative system established by Rudolf Steiner, seeking to use mainly natural means to optimize physical and mental health and well-being. Anthroposophy is a human oriented spiritual philosophy that reflects and speaks to the basic deep spiritual questions of humanity, to our basic artistic needs, to the need to relate to the world out of a scientific attitude of mind, and to the need to develop a relation to the world in complete freedom and based on completely individual judgments and decisions whilst fully respecting and supporting others in the community and the natural world. Anthroposophy extends into many areas, one of which is the design and construction of Waldorf school buildings. Tauranga Waldorf School employs and anthroposophical architect in all its development work to ensure the natural world is reflected in our structures and design. The Goetheanum The international centre of anthoposophy and Waldorf development. The original and its replacement were designed by Rudolf Steiner, and the present building was also designed to his concepts. Dornach The town in Switzerland where the Goetheanum is located. Where we say “from Dornach” it can be expected to mean based at the Goetheanum. Kolisko Conference The annual conference of the international Waldorf social initiative to allow health and education pracitioners to work together and learn from each other. held in a different country each year. In 2015 this was held in Cambridge, New Zealand, which allowed a number of our teachers to attend. The theme for the 2016 conference was Trauma in Childhood. Principal Whilst not a Waldorf position, under Integration the school must be managed by a Principal appointed by the BoT. Consequently, having responsibility not only for the normal functions of a State school, the load on a Waldorf Principal is extended to include responsibility to the WST for maintenance and delivery of the Special Character which includes all our festivals, celebrations and other Waldorf

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activities and, in the case of our school, the natural activities on the farm. There is also a greater emphasis placed on human relationships within the community due to Waldorf commitment to anthroposophical principles and a commitment to be active in the Federation of Waldorf Schools in New Zealand. We hope you enjoy the following record of our 2015 year.

The healthy social life is found When, in the mirror of each human soul, The whole community finds its reflection

And, when in the community,

The virtue of each one is living. Rudolf Steiner

Ka tu rangatira ai te wairua manaaki Ina kite te iwi i tona ake ataarangi

I roto rawa i tona tino whatumanawa inahoki E puaawai pai ana te ngakau aroha I roto i tena, i tena o te iwi whanui

Annual report of

Waldorf Schools Trust

To

Its Founders

2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS

KINDERGARTENS ................................................................................................ 1

REPORT OF TAURANGA WALDORF SCHOOL .................. 4

WALDORF SCHOOLS TRUST OPERATIONS ..................... 10

Property Report ................................................................................................. 10 Special Character Matters ........................................................................ 14 Financial Report .................................................................................................. 18 Chairman’s Closing Remarks ................................................................. 23

Pledge Policy ...................................................................................................................

Some of our Celebrations and Festivals ...............................................

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KINDERGARTENS Report prepared and delivered by Suzanne Allen. I’ve been working for the Waldorf Schools Trust in the Rose Ring Kindergartens for 17 years and, on that basis, I feel reasonably able to report to the Founders of our school here tonight, as well as the rest of our community , about the good work achieved in the early childhood section of our school, under the care and guidance of the WST, in 2015. I will just say, as an opening statement, that we in the kindergarten continued to appreciate the support of the Waldorf Schools Trust in what was, from the outset, a year of mixed blessings. We began our 2015 year together with six full time and two part time qualified staff, supported by one assistant. Very quickly into the summer term, two of our staff were involved in separate, unfortunate and serious car accidents. We were lucky that the two relief staff, who stepped up to fill these rolls and keep the boat steady for the children, were able and willing to stay on for an extended period. As it turned out, recovery was slow and our two staff members were not able to fully integrate back into work, until the second half of the year. Care of Staff has always been a priority for the WST who are the governance group and employers of all staff in the kindergarten operation, so while care of injured staff was a special focus, in 2015 wellbeing of all staff was also still and consistently apparent. I’m aware that it has been mentioned in the past but I cannot speak highly enough of the professional staff support offered to us all. It is most unusual in NZ early childhood settings to offer and fund staff supervisory support as part of employment conditions and I know that those of us who have also worked in mainstream settings know just how much this says about how we are valued as staff. Professional Development is the vehicle that facilitates quality for the children of our community and which ensures satisfaction and growth for our staff. Again in 2015 the WST was generous in offering professional development that was tailored to individual interest age and stage of staff members, as well as the needs of the Centre itself. In this regard, at a whole staff level we undertook:

The last stage of a two year project in recognizing, responding and reporting sexual abuse, A Brain wave course with Nathan Mikaere Wallace, Attended the Kolisko conference a national Waldorf Wellbeing in Education learning

opportunity concerned with the challenges facing the 21st century child. Our Waldorf oral language focus was supported by an in-house professional development

with Anthroposophical speech therapist Michael Burton and A staff Confident Communication and Action workshop was also held.

Curriculum in a Waldorf kindergarten as you all know, is concerned with learning about life. Its focus is promoting through discovery, learning about living in community. It’s about discovering the natural world and it’s concerned with discovery of the spiritual values of reverence, wonder and gratitude. In 2015, the kindergarten section, where people and environment are the curriculum undertook several development and review projects, to support this.

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Our ongoing focus and review of the learning offered our tamariki in our outdoors environment in 2015 led to a development for the younger Kotahi children of a new sandpit and garden development which they have undertaken, in true Waldorf style, with their teacher Sam. Similarly our bicultural review was extended into 2015 and moved into action in the form of two staff being hosted by the local Romai Marae . This is an area of development that takes all our hearts with a plan going forward of further links being made with Te Wheke and educational elder Rose Pere in particular, who we feel we have a special affinity with. In establishing our wairere, we were thrilled to host Local elder Grant Mikaere who we were proud to note commented on the significance of his experience at our kindergarten on social media. In terms of curriculum development in 2015, we are particularly proud of two streams of endeavor. The first was our Royal Garden Party, which morphed out of last year’s Royal Ball. Conscious that our program is so child-centered and that our parents just so love glimpses of their children’s kindergarten world, in the last years we have wanted to provide more of these opportunities, and we were so thrilled to again be supported in this by members of the Trust this year. Thank you to the Royal Wood cutter and the Royal Wood cutters daughter, to the king and his vision in bringing in an Italian queen from another land because his own had left for foreign lands. To Geraldine our fairy queen and the other members of the court, I mean Trust. Thank you. The Bush kindergarten transition program was our other great endeavor in 2015 and was supported and dreamed of and brought to reality through our relationships with the school’s teachers and the Trust who backed us in this. The conversation about effective transition to school has become more urgent over recent years as the challenges of our world increase and children change in response to that. We were grateful that our Principal was supported to talk this through with colleagues all over the world at Dornach because this gave weight and form to our dreams. Our first ever bush kindergarten program, long thought of and dreamed about, was a response to the question of “how can we help these children?” And in its first incarnation in 2015 we were very proud of what was achieved, even though we can see much that can be improved. Again we thank the WST for giving us the pedagogical freedom to act on our professional instincts and the beliefs and culture of the College of Teachers which always reminds us that when we put children at the center of our work, great things happen. Our relationships with our parent community continued to be an important part of our work in 2015 and we were supported in helping parents in the first stages of their Waldorf learning journey by a number of experts including David Garb , Mary Willow and a number of speakers who took part in our parent education Winter Raphael lecture series which the WST supported. Roll Numbers again in 2015 sat at a maximum and we were proud to graduate 26 children into class 1 at the end of 2015. Unfortunately our strong roll numbers did not equate in 2015 with financial success and you will hear in the financial report about our loss which I would just say sounds worse than it is and you will hear why. A review was subsequently instituted to look at this and other aspects of our structure, which was carried over and has been an important part of our work in 2016. During the year we extended our licensed hours and suggested to ERO that the last day of term was not a good time to judge our performance as a kindergarten. It will be a great pleasure to tell you about the results of that review which occurred subsequently in the first term of 2016.

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In case you haven't already realized this, we were the first NZ Waldorf/ Steiner kindergarten to get a 4-5 year review and we will discuss the reasons why at this meeting next year. In the meantime I would just take this opportunity to say once again our thanks to the WST all for their support of our early childhood section and their contribution and support to the education of the tamariki of this village. As a long-term community member I am very aware of the quality they bring. And ERO agree with me. I hereby table this report.

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REPORT OF TAURANGA WALDORF SCHOOL Report prepared and delivered by Mary Tait-Jamieson, Principal. 2015 was a really significant year for our school. In 2012 we had gone through a rebranding exercise with the Board of Trustees, which gave us a flash new sign at the gate, a new logo and a new charter and values. The Waldorf School’s Trust, a year later in 2013, developed a complementary 5-year strategic vision for their operations which was based around a three stream learning vision. In short form their major focus was to finish the primary school and prepare the future. So 2015 was significant as the midpoint of that Strategic plan. It was a year in which, for a number of reasons, we got to clarify just how far we had come – and, of course, be reminded how very far we have to go . At the end of 2014 we’d said farewell to Mario Gude - an important pioneering figure in the history and culture of our College of Teachers. Mario was central in developing and insisting on the quality of the learning journey we delivered. Having lost a master teacher and such a key figure we approached 2015 a little apprehensively? How would it be we wondered, to come together as a new constellation of teachers? As it turned out, what felt like a bit of a crisis turned into an opportunity called Michael Rall, our new associate principal, ex NZ gymnastics trainer and behavior and learning specialist who had built up a strong relationship with both our staff and our school ethos in that latter role, over the last years. And with a new intern teacher, Roanna Gornall in Class One also, our first adventure as a staff was to undertake the curriculum intensives at Gleneon in early January followed by attendance at the He Wananga te kaupapa Steiner at Taruna College. Those of you who were at this meeting last year may recall our description of the aftermath of the Listener article which had far reaching consequences for our sibling schools and although causing barely a ripple amongst our parent community here, was considered by Ministry of Education officials to pose serious threat if not attended to. Our proprietors responded strongly to the call at a national level for clarity about the ways our curriculum supports bicultural awareness and understanding, supporting and funding our work with human rights lawyer Mae Chen as well as a curriculum development project which came to be known as He reo Puawai which was launched during the 2015 year and introduced at the wananga. This initiative which was part of the Board’s annual plan, was strongly supported by our own whanau group who made connections with our local marae, which in turn resulted in a school pepeha being confirmed and bestowed on us by local elder Awanui Black and a mutually delighted relationship beginning with another elder, Grant Mikaere who has continued to support our students and school and is now seen in attendance at most festivals. Some of you will have seen him instructing our graduates at the Rose ceremony at the end of last year. Additionally the trust funded a consultant kaiako Maori – who supported the roll-out of the curriculum, working alongside teachers in the classrooms as the program is designed to be class teacher- led rather than operating as a specialist subject. The board of trustee’s charter, which directs the work of the school, was updated in 2015 to have an explicit focus on wellbeing, as a learning foundation for all tamariki, further reinforcing our developing

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Care processes. This is another example of the way over the last years the Board and Proprietors have dovetailed their governance decisions to achieve better outcomes for the children. The WST response to that Board action, in this 2015 year, was increased support and resourcing for the Care and Therapeutic stream through a discrete nursing therapy budget, employment of special character teacher aides and a further deed allocation in this area for parents willing to volunteer learning support aide hours- in aiding, tutoring and homework support. All designed to offer greater quality to the learning journey of the children. In terms of research- an activity the WST is committed to and routinely funds, the focus for 2015 was Transitions. Noting that transitions and thresholds seem to increasingly offer challenges for our children, the WST supported attendance at an international Transitions conference at the Goetheanum with the information and inspiration of that conference feeding in to the development of one of our finest innovations of recent years – the Bush Arakura program. Operating as a transitional experience between Kindergarten and School, the Arakura initiative was met with unparalleled enthusiasm by all stakeholders and has gone on to be extensively reviewed and tweaked in 2016. The level of cooperation we’ve always enjoyed between our Early Childhood Section and the School rose to new heights in this project with Class 6 creating the outdoor classroom for their kindergarten buddies. The collecting of data about the outcomes for children of this program will be important going forward. I think you can imagine just how keen we are to see whether the experience of the inaugural program – which saw a class of 30 enter class one this year with not one care plan in place - was a result of the program, or a fluke. To background why that interests us so much though, Care plans are individual and adaptive programs implemented for children with behavioral, wellbeing and learning challenges. It is not unusual to have between 3 and 7 children supported in this way, in Class 1 with the number hopefully reducing as the children move up the school. Care plans are developed with parents, and an important expression – on both sides - of the partnership needed to support children receiving a Waldorf education, and teachers delivering it . The Transition theme was repeated at the other end of the school also with the WST funding a Confidence Boot camp for Class 7 – a relational encounter training which again seemed to offer tangible results. A group of students from that class when interviewed by Education Review Office staff advised kindly that it is important to understand that bullying is a complex not a simple issue and one that needs the input and advice of others, so you always have to get your teachers and parents involved. The relational intelligence demonstrated by these young people is remarkable even by our standards – and certainly blew ERO’s socks off. Our Care emphasis continued throughout the year with whole staff attendance at the Kolisko conference – Kolisko is an Anthroposophical initiative which promotes the interface and working together of the Waldorf Education and wellbeing / health streams. With Michaela Glockler and Christoph Weichert pedagogical and medical section leaders from Dornach, leading this conference entitled, Trauma in Childhood, Building Resilience in the 21st Century – we again received nourishment and inspiration for the task of meeting the needs of these tamariki that choose us. A special mention should be made here of the encouragement our College of Teachers received to extend and deepen our Child Study practice.

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Another important Care innovation that gathered momentum in 2015 was the WST formalizing funding of two-way support for parents and teachers from Mary Willow- child therapist and family mentor. The provision of this mentoring, which clarifies and helps develop the mutually supportive conditions necessary for children to receive a Waldorf education and for teachers to deliver it, is very gratefully received in the vast majority of cases. It is certainly something that we teachers value highly as supporting our work. As well as working with families individually, Mary presented a number of workshops for parents and teachers through the year. A further significant development funded by the WST, this time at the request of parents who had involved themselves in developing a Parent Mandate and code of conduct for parents with support from Waldorf facilitator – David Garb. Following on from a first healthy communication project this parent led initiative asked for facilitated support to develop a constructive conversational format designed to facilitate healthy, ‘well -boundaried’ fruitful communication developed by parents, but for all community members. This was warmly supported by the WST and thrown open to all community members to take part in. Developed and published for consultation with the community towards the end of 2015, this format was implemented in 2016 and is an ongoing project for us all, and hopefully one that can gather momentum on the basis of all our leadership. The constructive conversation format is designed to ease and support all of our dislike of challenging conversations and be able to take part in these for the benefit of the children, in confident and socially hygienic ways. This communication initiative is a tangible expression of the kinds of special character contribution that can add so much in the second phase of a developing Waldorf school, where a small group seeks a mandate and takes responsibility for promoting an aspect of community life – in this case, he wellbeing of all. I'd ask you all to note that the format that has been offered by this group of parents, has been developed specifically to:

allow the intention behind actions to be illuminated, to support all of our roles and responsibilities to be understood and honored and to promote safe, and empathic participation and engagement for every one of us.

The constructive conversation format is also an answering structure to the parent collective question asked recently about how we will avoid negative and hurtful commentary, which is divisive and contributes to a culture of distrust and fear for all. The assurance sought by this group is in all our hands and rests in our shared special character, understanding that, when each of us consciously balances our sense of our rights with an equal sense and expression of our responsibility and self determination, then we not only increase our connection with each other, but we model for our tamariki our respect and partnership in their Waldorf learning journey – a journey in which one finds oneself in the service of, and in relation to, others. The adoption of the communication format by us all, and the increasing use we now make of it, also provides an answer to another parent collective question about the school’s communication plan to allow for information to be shared and to encourage support. By producing a communication format for us all, this parent group has provided us with a sound set of communication principles which encourages our special character way of operating to be understood by all, to meet the diverse communication needs of all community members at the place that they are at, in their learning journey.

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The communication principles we now have developed and articulated so clearly by our parent community, encourage special character understanding and development for all of us at both a practical and a heart level. Operating from the concept of calling each other ‘in’ as opposed to calling each other ‘out’ they structure our communication to ensure that feedback can be given skillfully and received without damaging others or interfering in relationships. The overall aim of this, is that dissonance may be seen and felt by all of us as productive - an exciting prospect and a fine community project. We look forward to sharing the success or otherwise of these and the other communication processes that arise from these principles with you at this meeting next year. The place where we all very naturally come together, our point of confluence, is in our wish as our karakia expressed tonight as parents and teachers and boards, together with the highest spiritual beings we can call in, to manifest a school worthy of all children. Perhaps the most obvious outward expression of this confluence in any year, is in our community festivals. What may not be apparent to those of you who have less of a basis for comparison, is that we are unusually lucky and blessed in this school to have proprietors who prioritize the quality of community life and who therefore apportion financial and personnel resources to achieve the rich experiences we enjoy together. And they don't just put the money where their mouths are. You’ve already heard tonight about the hands-on approach the WST trustees take at the Royal garden Party but I wonder how many of you realized that the tableau with the steaming cauldron down in the amphitheater at the Lantern Festival was also designed, developed and staged by our Proprietors. The support we receive for our festival from Louise Gawn as Special Character Manager has actually become a life-line for we teachers. As workloads have continued to increase steadily with the demands for paperwork, recording and communicating ever growing and challenging, the reflective, artistic inspiration-bearing time available for teachers, which directly impacts on what is delivered to the children, simultaneously reduces. The WST continues to respond practically to this crisis, and I speak for all the teachers in the school and kindergarten when I say just how much we value her input in this area. Last year- just to give you a concrete glimpse of the situation, without Louise’s stalwart championing, we were likely to have lost both the Lantern Festival and the Shepherds Play on account of teacher-overwhelm and exhaustion. One ongoing challenge to face in planning festival experiences is that as soon as you put teachers and parents in the slightly differently structured environment of a full community festival, children do not know who is captaining their ship. Are they on their family ship, or are they on their class or school ship? To complicate matters – the answer is different for different festivals and there are also different levels of understanding of what supervision of children looks like, and needs to look like for these events to be enjoyed by all. And added to this there is also the unlimited and mostly delightful initiative and high spirits of our wonderful children for us all to contend with. The increasing demands of new health and safety requirements , adds yet another dimension to the prospect of trying to manage a safe lantern walk for 500 people on our wonderful but difficult site, and last year had staff feeling the need to seriously apply a cost benefit analysis to the situation. The mental effort of designing an experience with enough structure to ensure that the spiritual and social point of the festival can be experienced and maintained without horrendously rigid instructions needing to be enforced at every turn, taking, let’s face it, all the joy out of it for everyone, added to

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the physical effort of setting it up and breaking it down, at mid year last year had us feeling less than optimum levels of love in our hearts, for what was once a great annual community event. I am happy to tell you that it was precisely this challenge that was attended to by Louise in her development of a whole new look Lantern Festival instituted in 2015 which we now feel we can sustain and can even perhaps share with the wider Welcome Bay community in time. All co-workers and teachers here tonight understand precisely the quality that Louise brings to this role and I know stand beside me in wholeheartedly thanking her for her steady patient dedication and inspiration in this area of our community operation. When at the end of the year, we again faced a second revolt - this time about the Shepherd’s Play - she pulled another trick out of the bag. With end of year workload again threatening to overwhelm, Louise’s talent for facilitating the turning of a challenge into an opportunity was taken up by our trusty kindergarten colleagues who, with the ever-resourceful and passionate Festival group, rewrote and restaged the whole Christmas story as a puppet show and saved the day. The advantage of that was, that for the very first time, every child in our kindergarten and school could attend. Held during the day, in our beautiful Whare our sense of it, at its first play-out, was that, while there was some loss for the parent community, the gains for the children in this intimate, acoustically superior environment, were significant. The Celeidh at All Hallows was a great event too. The community part of Remembrance Festival held on All Souls Day - this was an opportunity for us to get out and trial the great new all purpose sound equipment we were able to purchase, as the result of a large TECT grant and fundraising last year, to support our performing arts and which had its second outing, with equal success, at the Fair some weeks later. Some of our celebration photographs are at Annex B to this report. This seems like an opportunity for a short answer about the parent collective’s question about the WST’s fundraising strategy. The first and largest stream of funding in line with the WST’s Deed of Trust as well as our Integration Agreement as a school which dictate the work and direction of our proprietors, is sought via donation, as we all experience in our pledge contribution system. As a second stream however, the Trust who is required to support the College of teachers in all things, dovetails their fundraising to work with and support the Board’s annual plan through grant applications. The sound system is the 2015 example of this. It continues to be a source of real joy to me as our school operation grows to come into contact with so many people who recount connections with the school going right back now to 1989. As one of the pioneers, who is with us tonight, remarked recently- the Steiner school in Tauranga is an example of a modern miracle. An example of what can be done when a group of people come together in goodwill, with a dream and a focus. The quality of that miracle comes under scrutiny every single day from every single one of us. The extent to which what we have all created here together and for which we are all equally responsible, continues to meet our expectations or fulfill our needs is the question which when we can answer yes to, allows us the stamina and enthusiasm to continue on. It's a very individual thing, the destiny we all have with the Tauranga Waldorf School and it's a very individual thing too the way we feel about that creation at any given time. Believe me, I know this only

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too well - there’s ups and downs in any year and life in a village can feel like life in a zoo at times. So it’s invariably refreshing to receive feedback from those outside our operation. Unbiased perspectives are always helpful and when that feedback is positive, as it was in the case of the Education Review Office that we had in mid 2015, why, it's a complete delight. As a final word I would just say that it continues to be a great pleasure to be on a learning journey myself within the Tauranga Waldorf School. I continue to learn about what is needed to support the delivery of a Waldorf Education for the children of the Bay of Plenty. I also continue to find significant joy in discovering that aspects of our education, that were once considered to be unconventional, have gradually come be seen as progressive – where what was once strange and to some slightly alarming, has come to be considered an original and extraordinary pedagogy. This was the gift of ERO in 2015 who judged us to be a top-performing NZ school. Of course that is gratifying, but what is even better is that they rated our Special Character. After serious investigation of every aspect of our operation as a school, the Education review office auditors in 2015 concluded that : “Tauranga Waldorf School students are encouraged to find identity, meaning, and purpose in life by forming connections with community, the natural world, and the spiritual values of gratitude, wonder and reverence.” Importantly, they also said that the learning journey offered by our College of Teachers and supported by our Waldorf School’s Trust and Board of Trustees are developing students with the skills and confidence to think independently as well as to be able to cooperate and work together joyously and harmoniously. Which sounds suspiciously like a recipe for saving the planet, to me… For the founders, here tonight, who must ask themselves - are we carrying your mantle well?- I hope that what you’ve heard from me gives you comfort that your dream and vision is in good hands. I hereby offer and table this report, on behalf of the school operation.

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WALDORF SCHOOLS TRUST OPERATIONS Report prepared and delivered by Louise Gawn, Trustee.

The Waldorf Schools Trust is a signatory to the School’s Integration agreement with the Crown. That agreement together with our Trust Deed, are the two legal frameworks which guide and determine the course of our work together as a group of trustees. The special task and responsibility of the Waldorf Schools Trust is to receive donations and use these to protect, maintain and develop the Tauranga Waldorf School’s Special Character, and to accommodate the present and future needs of the school’s learning journey as designed and developed by the College of Teachers. Additionally, we govern the Rose Ring Kindergarten Operation, in a similar role to that undertaken by the Board of Trustees for the school. My report to the founders, tonight will concentrate on the first two of these responsibilities. Property Report In terms of growing and accommodating the learning journey, our work each year is divided into maintenance and development. The development part of our work in 2015, was almost solely connected to our sewerage and waste water project which took the best part of a year, is almost invisible, but the completion of which, has allowed for the possibility of new and exciting developments, things we actually want to do. Those of you who attended this meeting last year will already know about the drawn out process of solving the design challenges and what seemed like an unreasonable cost burden underpinning the sewerage /water project we were to take on in 2015. In summary these came down to the Council requiring a lot of money for nothing, and the difficulties of getting water to flow up hill at a decent pressure. This project had two distinct phases. The off-site portion which was conducted in conjunction with the Council to make the most of efficiencies by undertaking the works in conjunction with the upgrade of Welcome Bay Road. While this decision did benefit us hugely , in terms of quality achieved and cost, time was not an advantage. Problems encountered by the contractors with the gradient of the road and various other aspects stretched our timeframes mightily, but the gains we made were tangible in other ways. For example as part of our Education Centre Rules we were required to upgrade the front entrance to the school and this was able to be achieved at the same time with a greatly reduced financial contribution than if we had taken on this project by ourselves at another time. See the photos below.

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With the offsite part of the project eventually tied up, the onsite part started. The project consisted of a water line being trenched up the Eastern boundary as well as the sewer line, which was direction drilled or open trenched as the terrain dictated. On the whole the project went smoothly, although was elongated significantly as a result of the late start causing us to run into weather problems and therefore delays. We had some other disappointments too. With large machinery on site working against the odds at times in two-week term breaks, it’s probably reasonable to expect to have sustained some damage. The phrase you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs comes to mind in recalling the loss of one of the three flowering cherry trees, planted in 2014 in honour of some of the school’s pioneers with the thought of a great show of flowers for the annual Spring Pageant. With pipe needing to be pulled overland before being fed into place through deep open trenches, it was reasonable to expect some fallout, but we were very sad about the marble run designed and constructed by a group of a Class 12 students from Sanford Valley Steiner School in Brisbane as a graduation project undertaken with members of our first ever full Class 7 of 2009 – also by that stage in the same year level - and a generous parent. This delightful but ill-fated playground structure had already suffered significantly at the hands of weekend vandals, a new and growing problem for us to contend with, but was pretty much finished off as a result of the sewerage project. Such things can cause us to quietly question, Steiner’s certainty that we live within a world direction full of wisdom. A third casualty was the wilderness area of the kindergarten which took a hammering and, lastly, our Amphitheatre, formerly known to you founders and pioneers as Gary’s Grove. It is now sporting some really quite interesting levels in terms of the performance space we’ve been enjoying, as well as somewhat less than beautiful looking manholes which need to be negotiated. The upside of this is that these changes open the door for a more formed amphitheatre development, currently in the research and concept phase and which, it is hoped, can build on the dream of developing income streams for the school derived from an amazing outdoor performing venue in the longer term.

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The final stage of this project was the decommissioning of the very much less than trusty old septic tanks. Relics of the good old days – one of the three had threatened to fail to our consternation and embarrassment in the days before the 2014 fair. With some emergency attention it came right, only to fail again in the weeks to follow. It is wonderful to think this can't happen again as all our current toilets are now hooked up to the sewerage line which flows down hill to the pump station which is now managed and maintained by the council and from there makes its way up to Ranginui Road and beyond. As a side note here, which I promise will become obvious, the two reasons that the school name was changed from Tauranga Rudolf Steiner School to Tauranga Waldorf School were the often misspelling of Rudolf and things being associated with Rudolf Steiner that really shouldn’t be.

And another note here, is, the Trust received a question some time ago about whether the Trust has typically employed tender processes for the development and maintenance projects over the last few years so I would just like to use this opportunity to describe the tender process that was used for the sewerage as an example of the Trust’s governance level decision making and thinking.

As a rule of thumb, tender processes during our time as an integrated school have been used for Capital Development projects.

Capital Development projects proceed on the basis of Trust funds, via pledges.

I make the distinction here between development projects and those which by contrast are deemed maintenance projects, which proceed on the basis of crown funding and are managed routinely through applied quantity surveying projections, with preferred contractors.

Just as with the Whare project in 2010 and 2011, which is the only other development project we have undertaken since integration in 2005, we used a Selective Tender Process for the recent sewerage/ waste water infrastructure development. A Selective Tender process consists of a pre-selection process from a list of possible contractors known by their track record to be suitable for a contract of the size, nature and complexity required.

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As a governance group the WST routinely employs consultant advice to oversee both the pre-selection and selective tender process. For example, in the case of the Whare, when considering the Trust’s values, of innovation, sustainability and excellence with the yardstick of time, quality and cost – a significant historic building designed as a special character movement space to house Bothmer gymnastics and a small performing arts space, which the College told us was important, quality and in particular our special character brand of quality had to trump. But cost was important too. So our school’s Anthroposophical architect took that role with invitational tender being used and a fixed price contract attending to the cost protection aspect. Those of you who have an affinity with organic architecture will agree that nothing else would have served. I don't believe that I am speaking out of turn when I say that, for many of our founders and pioneers, the ambience and emotional quality of this Whare stands as a beacon and an expression of their dreams. In the case of the sewerage, the priority was slightly different. Tied to the rules constructed by our zoning status as an Education Centre Zone, the Trust again backed cost and quality over time and made very pragmatic decisions to achieve this in terms of the tendering process. Last year those in attendance at this meeting heard in some detail the endless negotiations that went at council level to manage this project. But with cost effectiveness as the driver and priority, the WST engaged OPUS, as the consultant engineers. This was because of their relationship with Council and the opportunities afforded us to make the most of OPUS also being the engineers for the Council’s upgrade of Welcome Bay Road. We made significant financial gains in upgrading our school entrance, another of the developments imposed upon us by the Education Centre Zone Rules and beginning our sewerage project, which included the need to run the lines up to the Ranginui Road pump station, under the auspices of, and at the same time as, the Council’s own upgrade. I will also remind you that we received a grant from the Ruth Nelson Trust, which added to this entrance upgrade project. Because of the knowledge and experience base inherent in that exercise, the WST then contracted Opus to run an invitational tendering process using their pre- approved contractors, which culminated in the winning of the tender by Higgins. Finally, I would just comment that while we have used selective tendering processes for our capital development projects to date, the WST is not closed to the idea of Open Tender, should that give advantage in future projects. As a governance group, our job is to take the best advice we can and we feel lucky that, as a state integrated school, we do receive advice from the Ministry of education about property development processes. To ensure sound process we routinely use both a Ministry architect - some of you may have met Tim Gisler, who manages our site plan and condition assessment processes - and our own Anthroposophical architect, Bill Algie, to develop our learning spaces ensuring that we have the best advice to underpin our decision making.

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With the sewerage system now in place, we look forward to a systematic working through and making good of our deficit with regards toilets. This has already begun. Looking to that future… Another step towards it, will need to be the replacement of the existing and very inadequate plumbing, again resulting from the gift and graft of many pioneers and many working bees. We are still using underground low pressure black alkathene-pipe and look forward to the day as we continue our upgrades, when all our buildings will be plumbed back to the new high pressure line in stages, relating to other projects for greatest financial advantage. We especially look forward to the day when turning a tap on in the kindergarten no longer results in stopping the flow of water at the farm. Perhaps this is the moment, while speaking of water, to answer the parent question received on Monday this week about our status as a Civil Defence Site, and the need therefore for a large body of water to be stored and any plans being advanced for a swimming pool…. The answer is, that we are not a civil defence post, that we do not therefore at this stage need to store a large body of water, and that, given the state of our plumbing, there are no immediate plans for developing a swimming pool, although I do know that our children would absolutely love one. The other stream of funding that the Trust has, which I’ve already mentioned, is the Capital Maintenance Grant. Unlike development funds, capital maintenance funding is provided to a certain extent, by the Crown. Known as Policy 1 money, this funding received by the Proprietor is provided by the government as targeted funds, in the region of $120,000 annually, and only allowed to be used for the purpose of maintaining and upgrading buildings that have already been integrated. Special Character Matters A second important responsibility the WST undertakes, which is outlined in both our Objects as a charitable trust and enshrined in our integration agreement with the Crown, is the maintenance, protection and development of our Special Character as a Waldorf School. As quality assurance in this area, we engage with, and take advice from, two professional bodies, our own Steiner/ Waldorf Federation which you will be hearing from tonight, and the Association of Integrated Schools. Two significant developments in the Special Character area were undertaken in 2015 that will be of interest to the founders. The first occurred in conjunction with the NZ Federation of Steiner/ Waldorf schools. This was the development of a Special Character Review Tool to be applied by all member schools, in a regular cycle. Designed at the suggestion of the Ministry of Education as a protective measure for our group of schools whose right to be integrated in the state system, some of you will remember, was questioned in the national media in 2014. The Special Character Review tool is designed as a reporting measure also, and is set up so that the Boards of Trustees can report to the Proprietors annually on their and their employees performance in governing and managing in ways that meet their obligations as a state integrated Waldorf school with a special character.

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The second piece of work in the special character area, undertaken in 2015 was the implementation of our reviewed pledge policy. The Updated Pledge Policy is at Annex A This review had concerned itself with the question of whether and how funding via donation is an expression of Special Character. Having researched and revisited this, the Trust continues to believe that a pledged contribution system that recognizes the social and spiritual realities of financial contribution, best expresses our special character. As such our pledge policy exemplifies the relationship between freedom and responsibility, and we remain committed to the concept of funding via donations that are freely given and gratefully received. Such a system honours the ethic of social transformation which is the mission of Steiner schools and supports the right, for any child whose parents truly seek a Waldorf Education to be enrolled. The parental responsibility, that comes with this, is to establish and demonstrate, in an on-going way, that this preference is real. Parents do this by agreeing to help create the conditions under which all the children of the community can take part in the special character learning journey, offered at the Tauranga Waldorf school. This includes contributing funds and/or deeds freely, with no expectation of specific service. And, because in such an arrangement there is no expectation of specific service and therefore individual benefit, parents, grandparents past parents and in some cases alumni who donate to this cause, are eligible for a tax refund advantage. The philosophical standpoint behind our pledge policy is mirrored in the board and proprietor’s shared vision as articulated in both of our strategic plans – that devoted teachers, backed by families, will plan and deliver cycles of richly connected learning experiences designed to meet each individual in the present, and gradually lead them forward to a future in which their intellectual, social physical and spiritual potential, apparent and hidden, may be realized. So this brings us to the end of the 2015 year, but in the last years we have used this meeting to also showcase, for the wider community, the future plans we have to accommodate and support the children who seek a Waldorf education now, as well as those who will seek this in all the years to come. Those who attended last year’s meeting will be aware that in 2016 we intended to add another stream of work to that already planned for the year, and work further on a plan to correct the weather tightness issues which have come to light in the pentagon buildings. This process has subsequently moved further through the first concept phase which we shared with you last year through to the design and consent phase. As part of that process, the Trust was obliged to satisfy the council that the certificate for public use required to get a consent for the project needs to be able to have one entrance free at all times, with accommodation supplied somewhere else on site for one class at a time. This is very current work the Trust has been engaged in, so you are getting a snapshot here of our thinking and process in real time. Where would we accommodate each of the three junior classes in turn over a year long period, and what would be the best way to achieve this? Should we put a temporary classroom up on the edge of the field, or should we use the opportunity to catch up with the school’s need for more teaching space?

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You have heard many times over recent years that much or the Trust’s work has been concerned with juggling the need to catch up in terms of the infrastructure demanded by our new zoning rules and to be able to work with the schools urgent need to develop more teaching space to accommodate both the current roll numbers – according to the ministry’s formula - as well as the ever growing waiting lists that we enjoy for classes. Just to give you a picture of this…. currently we have 20 children waiting and desiring to be accommodated in the current class 2- with absolutely no ability to take on these children. Consulting with the College of Teachers about what they feel could work - the Trust asked the following questions:

What do you, the teachers, need, value and want more of, in terms of development in both buildings and land?

And What are the teacher’s priorities for things that have been started, which need to be finished or

extended? This consultation facilitated by Bill Algie, the schools Anthroposophical architect, and shared also with the Board of Trustees, has not concluded but has been supported by a series of concept drawings (which show rather less than more) but are designed to support the thinking and decision making. To give you a window into our teachers thinking – their collective response was

They want to keep as much open green space as possible, They want to accommodate more of the performing arts, music and eurhythmy and More of the outdoor, hard arts and practical curriculum.

The Trust additionally has enunciated a philosophical standpoint that, as well responding to these wishes, the want to ensure that any of these next developments do not use the land in ways which preclude the efforts and vision of further and future Colleges of Teachers.

As a last point here, I would just say to the parents who have asked about the Trust’s furthering of the draft concept plans produced in 2008, as part of the zoning application to establish footprint on the land which, amongst other things like tennis courts and boarding schools, we had a kindergarten pod which was placed outside the Whare on the knoll and through into the amphitheatre:

You will have been able to hear already, that our College of Teachers have rejected this suggested placement of any future kindergarten buildings as it would take away too much open green play space, but in any case, hopefully you have also picked up that the Trust’s strategic plan in these last years has been directed very firmly on finishing the current primary school before looking at anything other than maintenance of our kindergarten buildings and upgrades required by any new Ministry of Education requirements. Running through the other future plans in the pipeline. Last year at this meeting you were shown, the first of the toilets which you see in construction up there on the edge of the Kauri classrooms You saw the plans for the Summer Rose Deck modification, which has been subsequently completed, and actually I think it’s probably appropriate to take a quick minute here to point out that Summer

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Rose Kindergarten is in fact a designated and integrated school building. I mention this because those of you who received the letter distributed widely in the community recently criticizing the Summer Rose upgrade, and who were disturbed by the claims made, may be comforted to know that Integrated teaching spaces must be constantly upgraded to the Ministry’s Modern Learning Environment standard, and they also have an Innovative Learning Environment which needs to be considered when added to our own Special Character requirements for aesthetic and sensorily-supportive buildings which create the benchmarks for the Trust’s decisions. The funding for this is provided, by the Crown. The Summer Rose deck, claimed to be a waste of community funds, was an upgrade of the original deck which was constructed and gifted by one of the community families back in 2006. The upgrade 10 years later has extended both its life and, if you want an opinion about the benefits of this for the children, do take a moment to speak to Suzanne about the extended learning opportunities provided by this structure. She waxes unusually lyrical on the subject. You saw the Tuapiro porch plan which sits as a priority but just not yet, and the Whare toilets which, when built, will take us further again toward being able to use this beautiful and significant building as an income stream to support our work. That concludes this report. 2015 was, as always, a busy year with much planned, much completed and that not quite completed carried forward, with so many more exciting dreams to dream and make come true. Aroha nui Louise Gawn.

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Financial Report Report prepared and delivered by Marlis Resenterra, WST Treasurer. We have tabled the reports audited by BDO for the year 2015. The reports might be difficult to read as they use the appropriate reporting standards.

I consider the version available online on the website of the Charities Commission more user friendly. The difference is that the online report is condensed into one entity whereas the original one differentiates between the operations of the Trust being:

- The Kindergarten - Oscar afterschool program - The Crafty Pukeko - Waldorf Schools Trust Of course they are both based on the same figures. Please feel free to have a look at both and see which one gives you the information you seek in the format you prefer. I have not received specific questions regarding the finances and will just cover the operations in general. As you can imagine it’s impossible for me to remember all details from 2015, but I am happy to get back to you if you email your questions to [email protected] or any of the trustees directly.

-100000

-50000

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

Trust Kindergarten Oscar Crafty Pukeko

Total recognised Income and Expenses 2015

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Let us look at the TRUST first, you can imagine it to be the umbrella for all the other operations. The Trust is the proprietor of an integrated school and in this capacity it has an obligation to upgrade and maintain integrated buildings at the same condition as a state school. This means our buildings have to meet the standards set by the Ministry. For this purpose the Trust receives Maintenance Funding, also called ‘Policy One Money’, and needs to be spent on capital maintenance (over $5000). In 2015 the Funding received was 111,496. The reports don’t show where the money was spent because the projects are capitalized at the end of the year.

To give you an idea look at the chart, the total expenditure came to over $440,000.

The difference is paid out of the funds and income from the Trust.

The total income was $574,000 of which $530,000 came from parent donations also called pledges.

The Kindergarten was in deficit by $56,800, which was higher than expected, partly due to a change in reporting standard. The new auditors have applied a different standard and charged any outstanding holiday pay to the current year. We didn’t expect them to do so, as this requirement is only compulsory for the current year 2016.

Please do keep in mind that all pledges are donated to the Trust and not to the Kindergarten directly – this is part of the operation showing a deficit. On a positive note, the deficit was slightly smaller than the year before.

The grant received for Oscar was lower than expected – and we had to write off old bad debts that we hoped to recover. Due to these facts the deficit for the Oscar program came to $9, 800 .

School entrance

Outdoor Classroom

Phone/Data

upgrade Cowshed Sewage

Series1 45000 5000 20000 48000 319000

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

300000

350000

Maintenance Expenditure

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The Crafty Pukeko made a surplus of $4,700 by increasing the sales while having smaller expenditure.

Pledge report

As I said before, the main income of the Trust is the Pledges. Parents and the wider community have donated $530,000 to the Trust in 2015 which was up from the previous year by $25,500 this is an increase of about 4 %.

These donations, amongst other things, are used to support the special character of the school, like Art supplies, Therapies, Eurhythmy, Curriculum resources, Festivals, the Farm, building the curriculum and so on. Most of our teacher aides are employed by the Trust, and the Trust supports the school by paying wages for teachers needed where the operational funding doesn’t offer cover.

Professional development for our teachers and staff are part of special character expenses as well as the provision of Parent education opportunities and support to parents. The levies to the Federation are included here a s well.

For 2015 the recommended pledge for all families added up to $698,900. Of this we have received in money $530,000.

Parents have supported the Trust by delivering deeds. Overall 2,892 hours were donated to the Trust. If the parents hadn’t been willing or able to offer their Time the Trust would have had to pay for the services provided.

If we try to convert this figure into a market value and add to the pledges received in money the Trust received about 80 % of the recommended pledge. This allows the Trust to support the education in the special character the parents chose for all the children.

This is an amazing figure of support!

I have been forwarded some questions regarding the management of the pledges and would like to take this opportunity to clarify them

One question was about where the parent donations are spent:

To answer this I need to start off by explaining what a donation is - and why does the Trust asks for donations and not fees?

The Trust has decided to operate by asking for donations as opposed to fees. This gives the donors the opportunity to claim a tax refund. For a donation to be regarded as a gift by the IRD some criteria apply for example the money must be

‘An unconditional gift’ this means that any donation is not allocated to one specific child. So if a family makes a donation it can’t be for the benefit of their family – it has to benefit all children and the whole community.

On the other side, to be able to provide our donors with a Tax Donation receipt we have to allocate the receipts to donors.

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Then we have to look a t special character. The Trust asks the families when enrolling their children to agree to our special character commitment for the Trust to be able to deliver and uphold the special character.

By signing our special character commitment form families agree Quote;

“To demonstrate my special character preference for Waldorf education, and my intention to support my child/ren and all children of the community to receive a Waldorf education, with the support of the Waldorf Schools Trust, I commit to an annual pledged contribution identifying money and/or deeds which I intend to contribute over the next year”.

To be able to budget for each year we need to know what the parents think they can contribute financially or in deeds, therefore each year we ask to provide a pledge form. The recommended amount reflects the funds needed:

- to deliver the special character education as it is now

- to make provisions for the future of the Waldorf Schools Trust

- and is aimed at a level the Trust considers to be manageable for families

So what does the Trust spend the money for special character on each year?

I have mentioned some of the areas of support in the financial report relating to special character.

Further the Trust makes proprietor’s contributions to the school, which for example covers any shortfalls for electricity used to heat the classrooms or support the Steiner Curriculum development. To put it plainly it is picking up the costs not covered by the operations grant the school receives from the Ministry.

The Trust spends money on developing the land, to maintain and run the farm, it covers and deficits form its operations.

Another question was what would happen if the Trust doesn’t receive support via pledges and deeds?

I mentioned the budget we prepare based on the pledge forms before. That budget is presented to the Trust for approval and it receives reports for each meeting.

If the support from the community is not received, the Trust won’t be able to support all areas and would have set priorities which of the suggested support can actually be provided. If there would be no pledged contributions, the Trust could not offer its support to the school. This would mean that the school would lose its special character and be run like a state school – and all our children would receive far less.

This brings me to one of the other questions, why are people asked to do deeds. Deeds are ‘services’ donated by parents. These services ideally lower the operational costs of the Trust. We keep a list of parents indicating their availability to deliver deeds and when a project comes up we do contact them.

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When families come to the school I often have a meeting with them explaining that the Trust values deeds just as much as money – but in saying this we also need money to pay our bills. I then ask parents if they have a special hobby or gift and ask them if we can call on them if a project requiring their help comes up. I also explain why we have a recommended level of support we ask for. Some families are happy to donate money and do additional deeds, other families struggle with money but are in a position to offer deeds. And there are families in hard places that can’t do either. Personally I believe - here lies the beauty of this system - the community can then carry these families through the hard time and help them moving on while keeping their children with us, so that hopefully once they are back in a better place they can help out other families in need.

The last question I wish to answer is regarding confidentiality

The pledge policy does not require information about donations to be confidential. We do honor the privacy act in keeping personal information shared with us as confidential as possible. This means that if a family shares any private details with me this information stays with me. What we keep are records about agreements made with families and this information is locked away but accessible to the pledge management team. This is good business practice to have more than one person holding and accessing information.

The pledge is a family pledge and therefore we do give information to family members if this is seen appropriate and useful to run our operation. For example, sometimes grandparents ask if there is any contribution left for the year, as they would like to pick this up. We then give the information, as this is useful, we have been asked for, and we consider this to be appropriate.

If a family tells us they would like to do deeds say by working at the farm we need to share this information with the teacher at the farm so work can be prepared or if a parent is helping by making new curtains for a classroom the teacher needs to know and liaise with the parent. This is common sense and useful.

But if family A comes asking how is family B delivering the pledge or at what level are the contributions from Family Care - I would not share the information as I don’t see this as useful nor appropriate.

There is also some uncertainty about how the level and way of contribution impacts on children receiving therapies. There is no connection between the two, as the care team makes these decisions with the school management and they have not ever asked me about contribution levels. In saying this contributing to the Trust is definitely seen as a special character commitment as stated in the commitment form.

I have spoken for long enough now but if you have further questions feel free to put them on an email to the trust [email protected] or myself at [email protected]

Thank you.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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Chairman’s Closing Remarks Prepared and delivered by Julian Ketel, Chairman, Waldorf Schools Trust I would just like to conclude the reporting section of our meeting with some final observations, thoughts and remarks to the founders gathered here. I believe we have a lot to be proud of in our school and kindergartens. The achievement and growth of our students speaks for itself. And it does not come lightly. It does not just happen. There are many elements that make the whole you have heard about through these reports – our special character, which takes precedence, and permeates everything, our parents and wider school community and our wonderful teachers and many co-workers. Every part makes the whole and this is a central tenet of our special character and the Waldorf/ Steiner philosophy. But that very philosophy brings challenges, some of which you have heard referred to, tonight. These occur often because you simply cannot apply conventional frameworks to everything we do. Yes, some of it is common to all schools – like excellent and inspired teaching. And we are increasingly seeing the state system adopting many of our practices, like the wellbeing focus and more child-centred learning. But for all that, much of what happens at Tauranga Waldorf School and kindergartens, remains unconventional by state school standards and will always be so. I know many of our parents come from a conventional schooling themselves and can struggle a little to set aside preconceptions of what constitutes success or good practice and what they could or should expect. I have watched this over many years now and have come to understand that that struggle does not mean accepting or receiving less in terms of quality. Quite the opposite, in fact! But it does require a different way of communicating and listening, for all of us. We are not perfect and we are always looking for ways to improve. But we also need to acknowledge that we, as governors and parents, have made a conscious choice to send our children to this school, with this philosophy and this way of operating. We have made that choice because we believe that this is the best place to prepare our children for the constantly changing modern environment that is their reality.

Our unconventionality is actually our children’s greatest gift. We can rest in the fact that the Steiner philosophy has proved not only to be enduring, but relevant, as our society has gone through multiple changes over the past century and I would like to add my voice to all the others here tonight in celebrating that original dream of the founders of our extraordinary and very special, special character school.

Annex A

Pledge Policy Purpose: The Waldorf School’s (BOP) Trust frames all its policies to acknowledge the special character of both the Tauranga Waldorf School and Rose Ring Kindergartens. As such this pledge policy recognizes the social and spiritual realities of financial contribution and sees this area of parental contribution as an appropriate format to exemplify the relationship between freedom and responsibility. Guidelines: 1) Annual pledged contributions are expected from parents/caregivers as part of enrolment. These contributions are considered to be one important expression of parent’s ongoing responsibility to and relationship with the Special Character of the school and kindergarten.

2) The WST will publish an annual recommended level of contribution that allows for development and delivery of a quality Waldorf education at both school and kindergarten both in the present and in the future. 3) Parents/ Caregivers are required to provide a completed and signed pledge form by a required date each year, denoting how the contributions required of their family will be met and confirming their child/ren’s enrolment space for the following year. This is viewed as another expression of the Special Character partnership. 4) The WST appoints a pledge manager to administer and monitor the pledge system and communicate with the community as well as an Assistance Group to support these efforts where necessary. 5) The WST also provides a process by which community members who are unable to financially meet the suggested contribution level required to support their children’s education, are offered alternate or flexible means. In an interview with a member of the Pledge Group, families will talk through this situation and arrive at reasonable solutions. Where this cannot be achieved, the Special Character partnership between parent and school is deemed to be in question. Since this partnership, known as special character preference, is the only legal grounds for enrolment in the school, such a situation is viewed as extremely serious. 6) The WST is committed to sustaining an ongoing Assistance funding source to be used to support families undergoing ongoing, sudden and unexpected hardship or financial difficulty.

Annex A

7) The WST, as Proprietor of the School, is dependent on parents making a contribution to service the debt the Trust has incurred in meeting its legal obligation to provide school buildings and facilities that are comparable to that of a similar State school. Conclusion: The Waldorf School’s Bay of Plenty Trust operates a parent contribution system that is individual, direct, based on long- term relationships and which operates within and as an expression of their ethic of social transformation. The WST acknowledges that without pledged contributions of various sorts, the school will be unable to deliver the special character education sought by the parents of children enrolled in the school.

Annex B

Some of our Celebrations and Festivals

Annex B

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