Vandalism Saddens School Community : Security: Teachers are outraged, parents sad and helpless, and the children uncharacteristically subdued. Gangs are blamed for this and other incidents.

The first-graders’ grocery-bag jack-o’-lanterns and handmade spelling test booklets are smeared with paint. A gang tag is permanently scrawled on the reading corner’s new rug. A window is boarded up; obscenities and threats--”You will die”--mar the floor and desks; the room still smells of drying glue and tempera splattered from the ceiling down.

Room 10 of Stoner Avenue School between Culver City and Marina del Rey was vandalized again over the weekend, despite assurances from school district officials that security grills would be installed on all windows by the end of last month.

Teachers are outraged. Parents speak of feeling sad and helpless. And the youngsters whose work was trashed are uncharacteristically subdued.

Teacher Carmen Dominguez said her students were upset by the incident. “My class is usually very lively but they were very quiet when they walked in here,” she said. “Maybe they’re scared. Their work is destroyed. One of the projects we just finished last week, the jack-o’-lanterns. Now, they’re all ruined.”

This and other incidents, ranging from a drive-by shooting that narrowly missed pre-kindergartners last year to three instances of vandalism in the last month at Stoner, are blamed by most parents and teachers at Stoner on gang members who operate out of the Mar Vista Gardens housing project just opposite the school.

Principal Ada Garza said no arrests have been made. But she added that at least one individual appears to have been involved in all of the incidents of vandalism. The same gang moniker has been scrawled on the walls each time.

Garza said the school police detective responsible for the case has been out sick but has scheduled a meeting with her today. Most on-campus crimes are handled by school district police, not by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Last month, after an adjacent classroom was sprayed with the toxic contents of a fire extinguisher, Julie Crum, district deputy director for maintenance and operations, promised publicly that windows would be secured by Sept. 30.

They were not, and classrooms were again entered through broken windows Oct. 5 and 18. Crum said this week that she had funded the job but did not follow up to make sure that the work was actually done. She now says the grills will be installed this week.

But teachers and parents say it will take more to make Stoner safe, noting that little has been done to improve security at Stoner since last fall’s shooting, which caused a public outcry and drew short-lived attention from district officials.

“Talking doesn’t do any good,” said Gary Kirtz, whose two daughters attend Stoner. “I bring them here and pick them up to make sure they are safe; I’m scared for them.

“The school doesn’t even have an intercom; when anything happens they have to send kids--they call them ‘little messengers’--out to the office.

“For most families here, Stoner is the closest school and their only choice. I’d like to transfer mine out, but they love it here with all their friends.”

Other parents reacted with a mixture of anger and sadness. “I feel very sad because of all the work that’s been done to get the classrooms ready,” said Rosa Navarro, whose son is in Room 10. “I am angry, and I called (Westside member of the Los Angeles education board) Mark Slavkin’s office.”

Rito Torres, father of four Stoner children, suggested that parents might pitch in to repair the damage but he noted that washing off the paint would not make the school safe.

Slavkin said that the school principal and the regional administrator should be working together to solve the security problem and that parents will have to organize to raise money from local businesses for more expensive needs, such as a public address system and additional campus fencing. On Monday he sent his field deputy to investigate the latest vandalism and said he plans to visit the school again to see what might be done.

More than 100 people turned out to air their security concerns at a meeting with Slavkin and district officials last year, threatening to withdraw their children unless they could be protected from the surrounding neighborhood violence. They formed a smaller committee to devise a plan of action, but nothing ever came of it.

Now teachers say they may organize a student sickout or other protest. Dominguez sent Slavkin an angry letter this week in which she accused him of being unresponsive to repeated requests for better security.

“Our classroom continuously suffers significant damage from ongoing vandalism” that costs the district money and deprives children of materials and instruction, she wrote in her letter.

“My students are being cheated of the opportunity to learn and work in a safe educational environment,” she said, adding: “You are guilty of causing the students, their parents, the community and me emotional distress. The students have worked so hard and made such progress in taking pride in their schoolwork and their classroom only to have them decimated by a vandal and bureaucratic red tape.”