Vandals Ransack School 3rd Time

Vandals wielding baseball bats rampaged through Monlux Elementary School during the weekend, smashing windows and children’s art projects and burning psychiatric records in the school health office, officials said Monday.

It was the third such incident at the school in the past year, a teacher said.

The vandalism was discovered when the school opened for its third day of classes Monday morning. Baseball bats were discovered outside the building.

“Everything was on the floor,” said Stephanie Flaherty, whose fifth-grade classroom was one of three ransacked by the vandals. Flaherty said the vandals smashed their way in through a window and proceeded to batter her stereo, dump students’ drawings on the floor, split open a globe and spray the room with fire extinguishers.

Flaherty said the vandals broke into the health office and torched some psychiatric records, and also shattered a china doll a student had given her teacher as a present. She said they also attempted to enter other classrooms in temporary buildings, but were unable to break the plastic windows to gain access.

The 650-student neighborhood school and its 170-student magnet annex have been hit twice before by vandals, she said--once in late August and once in October of 1994.

A school district police spokesman said the incident is under investigation.

“Three times in one year,” Flaherty said. “It’s getting depressing.”