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A family of 15 living in a three-bedroom house in Flaxmere. It's a recipe for trouble in a pandemic, and in more ways than just the potential easy spread of the virus.
Kimi Ora Community School principal Matt O'Dowda says its lockdown closure has hit its most vulnerable families hard.
Usually, those kids will eat breakfast and lunch at the school each day - now they're back home, literally eating into an already stretched budget.
O'Dowda says every one of the school's approximately 80 families of 145 students are struggling through the Covid-19 alert level 4 lockdown.
Families of students attending Kimi Ora School are struggling. Photo / Warren Buckland
"These families have kids who were getting their meals at school, but now school is shut, these families have more people who need to be fed," he said.
"And they still have to pay rent."
Hawke's Bay Civil Defence is intervening.
The emergency management team approached Kimi Ora and all other schools in Hawke's Bay to ask them about who needed help, he said.
"They asked for which families were struggling the most and I gave them a list of 15 'most in need' families," he said.
HBCDEM group manager Ian Macdonald said as part of the team's Covid-19 response, they were working with "a whole lot" of agencies who dealt with vulnerable people.
"What we are undertaking is a strengths-based response.
"We are working with the likes of Salvation Army and Age Concern and a host of other NGOs out there and asking them to contact the vulnerable people directly," he said.
"With the likes of schools, we have gotten in touch with them and asked them who those are."
Macdonald said those families are then provided with help, whether it is additional food, shelter or counselling, according to their needs.
O'Dowda said the community deals with "financial crap" all the time, so the monetary struggle is nothing new.
"But now overcrowding is a real issue, having lots of people living on top of each other all the time, 15 people in a three-bedroom house, it's a real struggle."
The slightly senior kids going to the school will also be making sacrifices, he said.
"In our school, less than 20 per cent of our families have internet connection, so they can't be connected," to online learning tools.
"So our teachers came up with learning packs. But I know our senior Year 7 and 8 students will be doing a lot of work at home, they will be doing childcare.
"The academic stuff will have to take a back seat, but they will be gaining a lot of life skills."
Perry Rush, national president of the New Zealand Principals' Federation, said the lockdown meant many families were struggling.
"As a nation we are confronting a pretty significant international medical crisis," Rush said.
"It is certainly causing a lot of tension and lot of stress for parents, particularly at a time when parents aren't working, or have lost their jobs, or have had to give up their jobs to look after their families."
National president of NZPF Perry Rush wants to people to reach out and help each other through Covid-19 lockdown. Photo / File
Rush, from Hawke's Bay, said the financial instability along with extra people in the household could cause a lot of tension and stress.
"A large number of schools pre-lockdown decided to send care packages home," he said.
He said it was great to see HBCDEM team reaching out to schools, to help them help out families in crisis and those struggling.
"It was great to see them thinking about the wellbeing of these families and many schools responded to that," Rush said.
He said it was still imperative that people reached out to each other and kept in contact.
"Pick up the phone, do a regular check in with your whanau."
O'Dowda added the Flaxmere community was "really supportive" and had some measures in place to help out those who were really struggling.
"Flaxmere is a really supportive community, it is an amazing place. People have the support of their whanau and police are helping as well, by making sure struggling families have the help they need."
The pandemic, he said, was a "big wake-up call" for New Zealand.
"I hope when people come out of it they are more supportive of each other, rather than point fingers."
