Tiny school seeks new teacher – Yellow to the rescue.
Just outside Auckland, there’s a small school – 13 pupils and one teacher. This school depends on phone books.
How’s that again? Phone books? Tapora School is on the Okahukura peninsula, on the Kaipara Harbour, near Wellsford – and its connection to Yellow’s classic printed business & community directory is, well, a big reason why the school still exists.
Keryl Lee jokingly describes herself as the “principal, teacher, school administrator and swimming pool assistant”. She came on board in 2016 but has witnessed a heartbreaking exodus of families whose children populated the school. Gone are most of the dairy, beef and sheep farms or farmlets, with much of the area now used for avocado farming.
Gone, too, are many of the farming families. Avocados do not need that kind of based-on-the-land human management.
“In its heyday, Tapora School had three teachers and many more kids than now,” says Lee. “There were a lot of families here; now we are down to eight – though there is some hope new houses are being built.”
What that means for Tapora – and any school – is that the Ministry of Education stops paying teacher salaries if rolls drop below a certain point. For Tapora, it is 25 kids. So, for several years, Tapora has been hard at work fundraising to pay a part-time teacher – so Lee can be relieved of some of her many duties.
That’s where Yellow and its directories come in. Every year, communities like Tapora, up and down the length of New Zealand, benefit through being paid to deliver Yellow books. Rob Jane, Head of Print, says Yellow is “really passionate” about the support it gives New Zealand community groups – more than $1 million a year, most of it from delivering the phone books.
Tapora uses that money to pay for a part-time, junior teacher, although Lee still teaches as well. The Yellow directories bring in much-needed funding, without which Lee says the school would have struggled to survive: “Absolutely. We do try other ways of raising funds but there’s nothing as significant as what we earn from Yellow. It is essential for us.”
The money raised goes into a rainy day fund which Lee and the school board guard zealously – funds which accrue after what seems like a military-style operation of precision and community awareness.
“Parents and others drive the cars and we give kids some time off school if they can’t do it in the weekends” she says. “It works well; we deliver somewhere between 3000-4000 directories
Jane says: “We produce the printed directories because, not everyone has internet, even though that can be hard to imagine.”
About 20 per cent of New Zealand’s households are not digitally connected, according to digital.govt.nz – and it is suspected the actual number is much higher. The digital divide extends well beyond just education, affecting adults just as much as students.
Yellow’s digital transformation means it now also provides digital marketing solutions that help Kiwi businesses get online, and get more customers. That one-stop-shop, digital marketing support for small Kiwi businesses ranges from digital marketing consultants, to websites, and search and social advertising.
“However, this all started with the book,” says Jane, “and there are many parts of the country and many demographics who either choose not to connect to the internet, or simply don’t have the capability, and shouldn’t be punished for that.
“For Yellow, it’s about ongoing demand and providing equity through our products. We’re committed to delivering solutions that work for our customers – and for the 34 per cent of small businesses nationwide who have no online presence, some of whom don’t have the resources to spend on updating websites, stock and inventory or putting systems and processes in place around that.”
The book, he says, therefore plays an important role in making connections – Yellow’s research shows the book plays an important role in making connections, with 77 per cent of searches leading to a contact (whether by email, phone, store visit, or website visit).
“We support nearly 300 community groups across the whole of New Zealand and really enjoy the help we are giving them – and which many of them give to others.”
Lee says the Covid-19 lockdowns gave a vivid illustration to Tapora School about the difficulty of pupils connecting to online lessons. Some simply didn’t have the internet; others had connection difficulties: “Like me, for example. I don’t use the internet at home because it is so often down. I go to school to use the internet there.”
The school roll is soon set to rise to 14; Lee says there are hopes that plans to build 14 housing nearby might produce more families and students in the area.
“There was a flower farm sold here last year and we thought that might mean new people – but it was bought up by avocado interests. They are big buyers round here.”