"The kids are devastated," said Mrs Henare. "At the end of the day it's them that miss out. That stuff, we've budgeted for and waited for a long time to purchase."
Mrs Henare estimated 12 computers had been stolen during the year, some worth about $3500.
It seemed burglars used the school to "go shopping", and school board trustee Milly Tangira said she had "had a gutsful" because the cost of the burglaries was holding back renovations.
"It's like taking one step forwards and 10 backwards ... it hurts the whole community because we are the only Kaupapa Maori here."
She had seen "brazen" thieves running across the grounds and said police rarely showed up quickly, prompting locals to jump the fence and give chase themselves.
The thieves' ability to disarm the alarm system had led staff to suspect the culprits had links to the school. Staff and neighbours had stepped up their own security measures, trying to anticipate entry points by barricading classrooms with furniture at weekends, but to little avail.
"We tried to cover it ourselves, but these thieves are getting very clever, so that's all we can do," Mrs Henare said.
After the incidents, staff sometimes stood guard alone at night as they waited for police.
"Sometimes I've waited up there for hours. Now I wait for someone to come with me. We've not bothered to wait for the police after that, they've not bothered to come."
Police said they had had a communication breakdown with the school, and after the last burglary staff had not responded to police requests for more information.
Detective Sergeant Andrew Clubley said schools were a "relatively common" target, because classrooms were unattended at night and in the holidays. "We encourage them [schools] not to leave computer equipment in view in classrooms."
Northland police recorded 156 burglaries and unlawful entries at educational institutes in the year ending June. Whangarei police estimated they responded to one school burglary every week, with Kamo Primary school suffering its fourth burglary of the year in August.
Ministry of Education property policy manager Jerome Sheppard said the Government did not offer burglary insurance to schools.
All schools received funding allocations to address vandalism, amounting to less than 1 per cent of the ministry's educational operations budget.
The vandalism repairs funding was calculated on risk, with $343,729 allocated to Whangarei schools this year, compared to $100,250 for Invercargill, which has a similar-sized population.