Showing Monlux That Somebody Cares : Donations of money, labor and supplies help make vandalized school more secure

Back in September, in this space, we talked about the plight of Monlux Elementary School. The North Hollywood campus had been severely vandalized three times within a four-month period. Understandably, its students had begun to get discouraged because of the frequency of those deplorable incidents.

We also noted, at the time, that the overburdened Los Angeles Police Department lacked the resources to devote much attention to vandalized schools. We said that the school could hardly handle the cost of repairs, given the fact that it has only about a dozen regular PTA members.

Monlux teacher Stephanie Flaherty brought the matter into even sharper focus in a letter to The Times Valley Edition last month. Flaherty pointed out that the school district was unlikely to pay for badly needed security grates on classroom windows. The cost of the grates was put at $2,000 per classroom. City Councilman Mike Feuer promised to donate $500 toward that end, but that was clearly not going to be enough.

Well, this time, people listened.

We’re pleased to note that Metrowest Security Systems of North Hollywood has freely donated about $3,500 in labor and installation costs to set up motion detectors for all of Monlux’s classrooms. That ought to give police a leg up in catching the vandals next time. At the very least, it ought to scare off the riffraff.

A Monlux alumnus picked up the tab for the motion detectors and provided the money to install security grills on 32 classroom windows and on eight transoms. And the school has apparently found a friend in Caltrans, which showed up at the campus recently with gifts of hard hats, identification badges, coloring books and a pair of California Department of Transportation trucks. An LAPD officer also was there to let students examine his police cruiser.

That’s standard-setting treatment, and Monlux deserves every bit of it.