A Dunedin school has been left devastated after thieves stole gardening tools used by pupils and the community to maintain its grounds.
Power and hand tools were discovered missing from the garage at Broad Bay School at the weekend.
Among the stolen tools are a weed eater, leaf blower, lawn mower, power drill and mulcher.
Principal Rebecca Gilbertson visited the school on Sunday to do some gardening, but upon opening the garage she discovered tools were missing.
"We’re gutted. We’re absolutely gutted," Mrs Gilbertson said.
"Our priority is the tamariki and their education. So it’s a real shame if we do have to spend money to replace these tools. It disadvantages the kids greatly."
The school had a roll of 30 pupils and many were upset that someone would take their property, she said.
"The tamariki take real pride in their school grounds and work really hard to be kaitiaki of their school. Not having those tools will mean that our whānau and community won’t be able to maintain the grounds to the level they want to."
Some community members had reached out to the school and offered to help.
The school had a working bee scheduled for the end of the month and needed the tools.
With recent rain and the arrival of spring, the grounds had to be maintained more often.
"We really need to get the [weeds] and the lawns back under control, but we’ll largely rely on our community."
The school had a small budget and preferred to spend it on education rather than replacing tools.
"If somebody had a change of heart and thought, ‘Oh, we’d better just get those back to the school’, we would love to see those tools returned."
No questions would be asked if the tools were returned to the school anonymously.
