Boy, 14, Is Charged in School Vandalism

A 14-year-old boy was charged Friday with the vandalism that prompted a controversial incident in which a teacher, hoping to solve the crime, made students write samples of the obscene threats found on the walls of a private Van Nuys school.

The charges were filed as administrators of the 48-student Stratford Preparatory School were trying to deal with the fallout created by media attention focusing on science and physical education teacher Vic Harding’s detective work. But some parents remained angry and withheld their students from classes.

Los Angeles police said Harding’s efforts had no connection with the arrest.

The boy, who was not identified because of his age, was charged with two counts of misdemeanor vandalism and was being held at Sylmar Juvenile Hall. Police said the boy surrendered to police Thursday after detectives, using information gathered from other students, told the boy’s parents that he might be the vandal.

Lt. Richard Blankenship said the parents then brought the boy to police. “They are to be commended,” he said of the parents.

The vandalism occurred March 24 and was directed at Laurie Hickey, who teaches English at the seventh- through 12th-grade school. Threats such as “Hicky’s dead” were painted across a row of lockers and on a student mural, and scratched into the front of a campus refrigerator and the teacher’s car.

Blankenship said the student admitted committing the crimes and was remorseful. “He was angry at the teacher,” Blankenship said. “He felt that the teacher was demeaning toward him.”

Acting Principal John Altounji said the student will be expelled.

Three days after the vandalism, Harding ordered students to write obscene phrases for him to examine. Harding said his purpose was not so much to identify the handwriting as to frighten students into naming the culprit by making them believe that this was his intention.

The unusual order outraged some parents, and when word leaked to the media, reporters descended on the tiny Sepulveda Boulevard school.

Some parents complained Friday that students were scolded by teachers in the aftermath because their parents had complained about Harding to the media. A memo sent to parents from the faculty on Wednesday exemplified what the parents called the misdirected concerns of school officials.

“They are more concerned about the truth coming out than what happened,” said Maria Cohen, who has two children at the school.

The memo makes no mention of the incident involving Harding but in a chiding tone criticizes the “parent-generated media coverage” that followed.

“News and television media transformed our campus into a circus,” the memo reads in part. “Despite our many efforts to keep the situation under control, things got out of hand.”

The memo also states that a teacher service that normally provides the school with substitute teachers has said it would no longer do so because of the controversy.

Parent Jan Shapiro said she has held her son, Aaron, out of seventh-grade classes since Wednesday because Altounji, the boy’s science teacher, scolded his class Wednesday and said the parents who talked to the media were “inhuman.”

“We didn’t start this and now our kids are being punished,” she said.

Altounji denied that he or anyone else at the school has scolded or taken any punitive action against students. “Absolutely not,” he said.

Altounji said about five parents have held students out of school since the incident involving Harding.

He said teachers are particularly sensitive to the controversy because Stratford will close at the end of this year and the school’s 10 teachers are trying to line up jobs for next year.