A school already in financial strife spent almost half a million dollars on company shares - to get the milk from its dilapidated school farm collected.
Northland College was in the red when it bought the Fonterra shares without the required approval from the Ministry of Education, which it owed
money to.
The $450,000 cost came before the Government's decision to appoint a commissioner to the Kaikohe school in April 2012. The commissioner removed the board of trustees and appointed new principal Jim Luders.
The spending on the shares was flagged by the Auditor-General this week in a report on audits of 2012 school accounts. Northland College was one of 61 schools that breached the Education Act.
"There were a myriad of complex issues within the school to do with performance, and finance was one of them," Mr Luders told the Weekend Herald. "The school has an attached farm, and as part of the agreement with Fonterra you have to have a number of shares to be able to get the milk tankers in, and so on.
