Don’t Blame Neighbors for School Vandalism

As one of the three teachers whose classrooms were vandalized at Monlux [Elementary School] recently, I feel I must reply to your editorial “Neighbors Could Curb School Vandalism,” Sept. 24.

My class has been vandalized three times in the past year, twice in six weeks. Your editorial seemed to place the blame on the neighborhood surrounding the school.

Our neighborhood is supportive of the school.

I urge you to visit and see how the location of these classrooms makes them a target for vandals. They are behind a tall concrete block wall and are visually blocked on the other side by an auditorium. This makes them invisible from the street. The answer is obvious: Install security grates on the windows. The LAUSD will not pay for this expense.

It took a crew of four 1 1/2 days to clean up the mess in my room alone. (The fire extinguisher powder made it impossible for me to clean it up.) This crew remembered my room, since they had been there only six weeks before, doing the very same thing.

Wouldn’t it be cheaper for the LAUSD to grate the windows of these three rooms, which have become the vandals’ target, than to repeatedly pay for a cleanup crew? It would seem that LAUSD budgeting procedures pay for a frequent cleanup crew, but not for grates that would prevent the vandalism in the first place.

Apparently, the only way we will get grates is to pay for them out of our very limited school budget; the cost is $2,000 per room. We are eager to hear from our school board member, Jeff Horton, on this issue. Councilman Mike Feuer has visited our classrooms and has promised to donate $500 toward the grates, which we greatly appreciate. The faculty, staff, and students of Monlux are proud of our school; it has been in the neighborhood for 50 years and has undergone many changes, but blaming the vandalism on a lack of neighborhood support is missing the point.

STEPHANIE FLAHERTY, Valley Village