A school in Tauranga has been left with thousands of dollars of repairs after thieves damaged property in order to steal school speakers.

Tauranga Primary School on Fifth Avenue is now counting the cost, with the principal explaining this is not an isolated incident.

'This is the third time our speakers have been stolen over the past five years and I know it is an ongoing issue for school sites,” says Tauranga Primary School principal Fiona Hawes.

Speaker theft is an issue for schools across New Zealand, including the Bay of Plenty region.

In July 2019, Welcome Bay School on Welcome Bay Road put out an appeal on their Facebook page after a similar incident.

The speakers are used to play music to indicate the start of school and break times. They were stolen from two different rooftop locations. The cages in which the speakers were stored were also damaged as well as the roof itself. Specialist equipment will be needed for the repair job.

This is not the first time a school in Tauranga has had its speakers stolen. Image: Tauranga Primary School Facebook.

Fiona says that the school has taken new steps to protect the speakers each time they have been stolen. The latest design, she says, was meant to be 'bulletproof”, however, that was unfortunately not the case.

'It is such a shame,” says Fiona.

'Now we have to put time, energy and money into replacing stolen items, rather than into children and their learning.”

This is the third time the school has had its speakers stolen. Image: Tauranga Primary School Facebook.

Fiona has informed SunLive she is intending to make police aware of the incident.

In 2020, after a spate of thefts in Wellington and Porirua, a police spokesperson told Stuff that these systems are often stolen in order to be attached to cars for sound systems.