School still feels chill

Teachers at Westmere Primary are doing their best but, like others in Auckland, are stymied by lack of funds, reports John Landrigan.
One community's struggle to raise money to build a school hall hit a nerve this year. While Westmere Primary School has scraped and scrounged to raise $1 million over eight years for a hall, its students must gather for lessons outside on cold concrete steps under a windswept canvas sail.
This month, we revisited Westmere Primary School, which needs a new hall because the roll grew so much not all pupils could fit into the old one. The old hall had to be converted into classrooms.
Other schools, from Tuakau to Rodney, have also told of their financial woes in earlier write-ups by The Aucklander.
One concerned, but unnamed, teacher says the mid-decile North Shore secondary school he/she teaches at also suffers from serious under-funding.
"My classroom is very poorly heated and students have difficulty getting anything done when they are shivering in the winter.
"The ceiling leaks whenever it rains and the upper windows cannot be shut so that on windy days the gusts blow straight through the room as though we were outside."
The teacher talks about mould, lack of money to buy textbooks and a converted toilet for an office (see full letter below).
It is clear that Westmere Primary school principal Carolyn Marino is not the only one concerned about parents constantly having to dip into their pockets or donating their time to keep schools afloat.
"We can't keep going to the community and asking for money. We are exhausting our community," says Mrs Marino. "We have a major deficit for staffing. Our class sizes will be bigger next year. We can't afford that. The system is not working."
A teacher writes ...
I am writing in response to your article on the poor funding for schools in Auckland. I teach at a mid-decile North Shore secondary school which suffers from serious under-funding.
My classroom is very poorly heated and students have difficulty getting anything done when they are shivering in the winter.
The ceiling leaks whenever it rains and the upper windows cannot be shut so that on windy days the gusts blow straight through the room as though we were outside.
My colleague across the hall has a major mould problem in her room and has had to bring in her own dehumidifier She sprays the room with air freshener as the mould smells.
Our office is a converted toilet and has no heat other than plug-ins.
Budget is a major problem as it has been slashed steeply this year. The head of English has literally been in tears because there is no money to buy necessary textbooks.
Department budgets have been halved for next year. Some non-permanent teachers have been forced to be part-time and several let go. This is a problem for students and staff because one who was let go was an ESOL teacher.
This means we cannot have any  ESOL classes for Year 9 or 10 students next year. All will have to be mainstreamed. They will of course be placed in the smaller bottom-stream classes but they still won't get any real attention. That is because we are losing all our teacher aides next year. Their budget has also been decimated by Group Special Education. They will now only fund teacher aides for students with severe behaviour problems who are a danger to themselves or teachers.
So here we are, a state school on the supposedly affluent North Shore where there are no teacher aides, no esol classes for juniors and not enough textbooks to serve the oversized English classes which are meeting in freezing, leaky, mouldy rooms while their teachers huddle around electric heaters in their ex-toilet office.
Given the way Adult Community Education and Early Childhood Education have already been gutted by this Government, I doubt any remedy to these problems will be forthcoming.
In fact, it seems all Anne Tolley is interested in is cutting our funding even more and giving extra cash to private schools and private companies interested in building and owning future schools.
 -  Concerned Teacher