KEY POINTS:
Photocopying and printing costs Papatoetoe High School more than $150,000 a year - three times the amount it gets in donations from families.
The South Auckland school's staffroom tea and coffee bill is almost $18,000 a year, while the demands of maintaining the computer network with software and
internet have an annual price tag of more than $30,000.
They are typical of the costs of running a state secondary school.
The School Trustees Association says the mounting pressure on costs is the top issue facing schools - with preliminary research indicating they are digging deeper into funds from families and the community.
The debate about school donations is intense, with some saying parents are being pressured into paying for education promised as "free".
It has been claimed the money used to be for extras but it's now going on necessities.
To find out what schools really spend, the Weekend Herald asked two, Papatoetoe High and Auckland Grammar, to open their books and show us.
Papatoetoe's multimillion-dollar balance sheet ended last year more than $230,000 in deficit - the biggest since principal Peter Gall took the helm 13 years ago.
Accounting write-offs made up part of the deficit and the school spent more than it planned on staff salaries.
The dollars coming in were less than the number going out.
Mr Gall said the decile 3 school - which got $50,000 last year from families from its request for an $80-a-student annual donation - was in good financial health and able to absorb the shortfall.
But Mr Gall, who is also head of the Secondary Schools Principals Association, said such losses were unsustainable. He said those on the frontline were angry about rising school costs and sceptical of how much money from big-ticket Government education initiatives filtered down to the classroom level.
Papatoetoe High raised about a fifth of its total funds last year - $800,000 - locally. The figure includes parent donations, fundraising, fees from international students, grants and money gathered for school trips, which last year included a classical studies trip to Europe and a travel and tourism journey to Hong Kong.
Auckland Grammar headmaster John Morris - whose decile 10 school's financial books revealed the $3.5 million in locally raised money made up more than half its funds for last year - said schools "absolutely" had to raise too much themselves.
On the North Shore, representatives from 10 schools under pressure to raise millions of dollars a year are meeting politicians over funding levels and trying to highlight the "extent of the shortfall" to parents.
Schools in other parts of Auckland are reviewing the areas for which they can charge compulsory fees - such as items not deemed essential to students' learning - with a view to trying to bring in more cash.
A Herald story last year showed that, nationally, parents paid close to $54 million more than a year earlier to help run their children's schools.
TRUSTEES' DOGGED CAMPAIGN ON FUNDING
If you think you've heard about the issue of schools struggling for cash before - you're right. Items on the media statements page of the School Trustees Association website during the past four years carry a consistent message:
* "Acting Education Minister Steve Maharey's claim of increased Government funding for schools ignores the fact school communities are footing a growing share of the bill" (August 2004)
* "As schools prepare for the new year, the New Zealand School Trustees Association is reminding the Government that an increase to operations grants is still at the top of its wish list" (January 2005)
* "It is very disappointing the Government continues to impose costs on boards of trustees at a time when schools are already struggling to make ends meet" (December 2006)
* "The Government is being told to stop relying on communities to dig into their pockets to the tune of an estimated $500 million a year to keep schools afloat" (December 2007)
Cynics might say that the arguments are raised each year before the Budget. But association general manager Ray Newport makes no apologies and says to expect a statement over the next few days calling for the Government to up operations funding.
Mr Newport says it is the biggest issue facing schools. He says the association worked on major projects about it for the past five years, with one of the newest pieces on financial pressure points contributing to a report set to inform decisions ahead of the Budget.
Mr Newport says costs of technology and support staff are huge.
"The number of support staff needed in schools these days is about 2.5 times what were originally in schools back in 1989 when the ops grant was formulated."
