Vandals Deface Tujunga School With Racist Graffiti

Students and teachers returning Monday to Pinewood Avenue School discovered huge red swastikas and other racist graffiti spray-painted on new murals, playground equipment and buildings, school officials said.

Their discovery came a week after hate messages were scrawled at another Los Angeles Unified School District campus in the San Fernando Valley. Officials said there was no apparent connection between the two cases.

At Pinewood, the swastikas and racist proclamations were painted over seven new murals, on handball backstops, a wooden storage unit and the outside walls of the main office and cafeteria.

“Everyone was in shock, a real blow,” said Principal Esther Macias. “It was heartbreaking.”

A district official said such crimes are difficult to prevent.

“Given the fact that it happened over the weekend, there’s not much we can do except clean the situation up,” said Pat Spencer, an LAUSD spokesman. “We don’t know who did the damage, and don’t know if it will ever be determined.”

The previous weekend, nearly 800 students, staff and community members had joined in a massive effort, dubbed the Pinewood Miracle Dream Project, to improve school grounds: Volunteers planted trees, painted murals, resurfaced blacktop, sodded a playing field and put in a sprinkler system.

The school raised about $5,000 for the project, which was valued at an estimated $65,000 including donated goods and volunteer labor, said Tyler Bush, who co-directed the initiative.

Macias said she told students at the regular Monday morning assembly about the vandalism. Teachers also spoke with students in class.

“I’m sad,” said Gladys Mazariegos, 9. The long-haired Tujunga fourth-grader had painted a planet on an interstellar mural that was vandalized.

Parents picking up their children after school were outraged.

“I’m angry. They just finished this,” said Caroline Ardon, 26, of Tujunga, whose son attends Pinewood. “I don’t know how anyone could do this.”

District maintenance employees painted over the graffiti on the buildings Monday morning, but school officials said they were still looking for a way to clean the murals without ruining their whimsical images.

*

The school filed a report with the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill Division, whose detectives will investigate the case.

After school, three girls played handball, bouncing a rubber ball off a giant mouse mural defaced with red numbers referring to a biblical passage.

“Whoever did this shouldn’t have,” said Denice Wilson, 8, shaking her head.

Over Memorial Day weekend, vandals scribbled hate messages and scattered papers and books in an English as a second language classroom at George Ellery Hale Middle School in Woodland Hills.