After the mud is cleared, schools are left to pick up the pieces

January’s deadly storms, which claimed the lives of 10 people, have left the affected communities in a state of mourning. Many commentators have remarked that we seem to be stuck on repeat as the pictures and stories on our television screens seem tragically familiar – roads impassable, bridges washed out, hillsides collapsing, homes flooded, communities bereft.

As schools return after the summer break, many educators are engaging in tasks over and above delivering the curriculum. Some are checking on their communities, or supporting their students to cope with loss and grief, while others are helping tamariki manage their anxiety when it begins to rain.

As researchers from the education sector, we have become acutely aware of the role that schools and early childhood centres play when their communities have faced a tragedy. Since 2023, we have been gathering the stories of schools and ECE centres in Hawkes Bay and Tairāwhiti as they respond, recover and rebuild after Cyclone Gabrielle.

While we acknowledge the role of the many hardworking first responders, emergency personnel, contractors, service providers, iwi and community volunteers, the stories we want to share highlight a sector that appears largely invisible to the media and general public – the local school or early childhood centre.

Getting students back to school is a priority; it gives tamariki a sense of continuity, and whānau both the necessary space to get on with the huge recovery effort, and the reassurance that their tamariki are being cared for. The people charged with that task are often victims themselves, with trauma and losses of their own. Yet they front up, day after day, with care and compassion as they support their students. Snapshots from our post-Gabrielle visits highlight that the recovery process for schools in these communities is long and complex.

Our first visit to Hawkes Bay was in August 2023, just five months after the region was devastated by the cyclone. Schools became local emergency hubs, supporting their communities with everything from creating helicopter landing pads to providing a warm cup of tea. They went to enormous efforts to hold their communities together, distributing food, clothing, and other necessary supplies, and acting as temporary shelter for many who had lost their homes. Staff crossed rivers in dinghies daily to access their schools and worked around the clock to provide students and the community with support, even when their schools or centres had sustained significant damage or were operating out of temporary premises.

We went back to Hawkes Bay and Tairāwhiti in 2024, and then again in 2025, revisiting many of the educators we spoke to on that first trip. What was striking was how present the cyclone’s impacts were years after the initial event. One of the schools we visited – Nūhaka School, just east of Wairoa – required a full rebuild after Gabrielle.

When we visited them in late 2025, they were only just settling into their rebuilt school. It had taken two-and-a-half years for them to return after moving four times and most recently working out of a cramped local church.

Rebuilding Nūhaka School was only achieved through the staunch advocacy of Nūhaka’s inimitable principal, Raelene McFarlane, who stood up against a system that seemed intent on throwing every possible bureaucratic hurdle in her way. At the same time, Raelene and the Nūhaka staff were relentlessly focused on the tamariki; helping them come to terms with what had happened and to learn from the experience. Nūhaka’s story is only one of many and will have been replicated in many tragic events from the Canterbury earthquakes to the present. Schools cannot continue to take on these extra responsibilities without support. Based on our research, we make three suggestions. Riffing on the theme of ‘the 3Rs’, we are using the letters to stand for recognition, resourcing and respite.

Recognition: Schools need to be recognised for the extra load they carry as first responders, and in providing ongoing community crisis and psycho-social support when students return. This support is often required for several years following a disaster.

Resourcing: Additional staffing support needs to be provided in recognition of increased workloads, as well as an extra allowance for school management, a post-disaster grant for the loss of physical resources and education materials, and the facilities to enable schools to act as community hubs at short notice. Mental health support needs to be rolled out for tamariki, such as the Mana Ake counselling programme created post-Canterbury earthquakes. Such resourcing supports need to be provided as a matter of course, rather than on an ad-hoc basis, as it is.

Respite: The physical, psychological and emotional toll that these extra responsibilities take does not always show up immediately. Recovery is a long journey and schools impacted by disaster events should not be put through bureaucratic hurdles, but supported with compassion and understanding.

The role of schools in disaster response and recovery has been under-recognised and under-appreciated for far too long. Planning for the next disaster needs to start now.