School Picks Up Pieces After Vandals’ Spree : Crime: The trashing of 17 classrooms at the Colfax Avenue campus, possibly the work of a gang, is one of several similar acts recently in the district.

Colfax Avenue Elementary School teacher Marcia Weiss tearfully surveyed the destruction wreaked on her school by vandals Tuesday. Desks were overturned, a dozen computers smashed, carpets drenched with green paint, windows shattered, piles of textbooks soaked with orange juice, holes punched through ceiling tiles and students’ artwork torn to shreds.

“This is supposed to be a haven for the children from all that street gang stuff, and now they don’t even have this,” she said angrily, sweeping the crumpled papers, broken crayons and shards of windowpane into an ugly pile in the middle of her third-grade classroom.

The scene was repeated throughout the North Hollywood school as students, teachers, parents and neighbors wielded brooms, mops and cleaning pails to undo what school district police say may have been a gang-related trashing.

Police would not give details, but a teacher said gang graffiti was found.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials reported that the damage to 17 of the 25 classrooms at Colfax will exceed $27,000--”very uncommon, because so many rooms were damaged,” said Gabriel Cortina, superintendent of the school district’s Region E.

It was one of a rash of mishaps and vandalism cases that have occurred around the district over the past month.

More than $300,000 worth of damage occurred when fire hit Mt. Gleason Junior High School in Tujunga. The cause is being investigated.

About 50 broken windows had to be replaced at John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley and at Granada Hills, Verdugo Hills and Sylmar high schools. Officials believe that those responsible for the damage were looking for money because desk drawers were pulled out but no equipment was taken.

A “small number” of individuals broke into the Colfax schoolrooms early Tuesday morning, apparently after a school patrol car made its usual rounds at midnight, Cortina said.

The intruders gained access to the classrooms by breaking windows adjacent to doors and reaching in to open the locks. The damage would have taken at least two hours to inflict, Cortina said.

Theft and vandalism cost the school district $6.1 million in the 1989-90 school year.

Although some district schools have burglar alarms, Colfax does not because it has been virtually free of vandalism and gang-related problems, Cortina said.

“Because of budget cutbacks we can’t afford to put alarms in every school. So the ones with the most problems get them.”

Most of the school’s 630 children were sent home for the day because their classrooms were unusable. For students with working parents, informal classes were held on the school grounds, in the library and in eight classrooms that were untouched by the vandals.

School was expected to be back in full session today.

Principal Elisabeth Norton-Douglass and another teacher discovered the break-in when they arrived about 7 a.m.

“I had never seen anything like it in my 20 years teaching,” Norton-Douglass said.

“I’m just real sad and devastated. So much of what we have was hard-won by parents who raised money for computers and books and other items.”

Of the damage Tuesday, at least $12,000 of it involved items bought by the PTA and other support groups, Cortina said.

Norton-Douglass estimated that a dozen of the school’s classroom computers were destroyed, as were a microwave oven, overhead projectors, radios and typewriters.

Some classrooms had been sprayed with fire extinguishers.

A kindergarten art project, which depicted friendship among peoples of the world, was torn from the wall and trampled. Gallons of orange juice, which were part of earthquake preparedness kits, were poured on desks, floors, books and elsewhere.

In one classroom, the vandals smashed an aquarium but first safely placed the guppies it contained in cups of water.

“They were vandals with heart,” parent Steve Simon said, his voice dripping sarcasm.

Simon, a TV cameraman, said he had thought of sending his fifth-grade son to private school but that “maybe moving out of Los Angeles altogether” is the only way to ensure the child’s safety.

But Kristin Garbett, whose two children attend the school, pulled off her heavy work gloves and said: “The solution isn’t to run. You just can’t give them the territory.”

“I feel really sad because if this was done by kids, it shows how desperate and angry they are. And that makes me so frustrated . . . where are their parents?”

Nine-year-old Jenny Marinot leaned against a courtyard wall and watched the mop-up operation, which received help from several senior citizens from the East Valley Multipurpose Center across the street.

“It’s a disaster,” Marinot said. “I read the Bible a lot and I bet God doesn’t like this one bit.”

Fourth-grader Ashley Mills watched her mother, Jocy Mills, put a dustpan full of trash into a large garbage can.

“It’s horrible,” the 10-year-old said. “They must hate our school. I feel sad.”