Classroom Defaced With Hate Messages

An English as a Second Language classroom at George Ellery Hale Middle School was trashed and vandalized with hate messages during the holiday weekend, school officials said.

When teachers and students entered the classroom Tuesday morning, they found ankle-deep piles of books and papers covering the floor and racial slurs and other markings scratched on the outside of the door and written on students’ pictures, which hung on the bulletin board, teacher Judith Crespo said. The first-period class was moved to the library.

Nothing was taken from the room, which contained expensive electronic equipment, and no other classrooms were vandalized, Principal C. Jean Leighton said. She said the damage was minimal.

Andrew French, the school’s police officer, said he is investigating the incident and that a report will be filed with the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division and with the Los Angeles Unified School District police.

Leighton said the school has had minimal vandalism this year and that this is the first time any written racial slurs have been reported. She said that officials have no suspects.

“I cannot make an assumption on the type of person who did this,” Leighton said. “It’s simply a vandal who defaced public property.”

Crespo said she does not think the vandalism was the work of a student upset with a grade because the class roll book, which was thrown on the ground, had not been manipulated. Nor does she think a student was trying to get back at her.

“There has been no type of incident this year where a student has been angry with me,” Crespo said.

Six classes are held in the schoolroom with a total of 100 students, Crespo said.