School Recovering After Attack

Rabbi Zvi Block of West Valley Hebrew Academy opened a classroom door Monday morning to point out one of many freshly inked swastikas and anti-Semitic expletives marring his campus.

Block, principal of the 200-student Orthodox elementary and middle school, also pointed out an irony: The graffiti was scrawled around a sign in Hebrew advising students, “Guard your tongue from speaking evil.”

The school was vandalized Sunday, police said, by two teenage boys who reside in a home for youth with alcohol or drug problems. The suspects, ages 14 and 15, were arrested on the campus, which reopened on schedule after an overnight cleanup effort. The boys were being held in Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

The boys allegedly doused classrooms with foam from fire extinguishers, broke windows, smashed computers and scrawled graffiti, causing an estimated $50,000 to $100,000 in damage.

Educators said it was not the first act of vandalism at the 12-year-old school situated in the 5700 block of Oso Avenue, but it was easily the most destructive.

“They went bananas,” Block said. “This was totally disastrous.”

Parent volunteers and professional cleaners worked from 10 p.m. Sunday to 7 a.m. Monday, but much of the damage remained when children arrived for school.

Teachers, the rabbi said, were turning the damage into another lesson for the academy’s students, some of whom were forced to double up in those classrooms that were usable.

“We spoke with the kids,” Block said. “I told them there is evil in the world. Though the evil continues, the good triumphs. But it’s also important for children to know that crime doesn’t go unpunished.”

The suspects are expected to be charged in a hearing today with one count each of burglary, vandalism and commission of a hate crime, according to Lt. George Rock of the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley Division.

Rock said the boys, who apparently acted alone, were not affiliated with any organized hate groups.

A French-language school that sublets space on the campus was also vandalized.

Police said the boys came from a sober-living home, which Rock characterized as “a house that operates for juveniles that have a dependency problem.” Police would not disclose the location of the home.

Academy teachers spent Monday morning discussing the incident with their students.

“I guess the biggest problem is fear,” said teacher Sharon Leyton, whose fourth-grade classroom was one of the hardest hit. “But as bad as this looks, anybody can write this. I don’t feel it was directed toward the Jews; this was just stupid teenagers who happened to know it was a Jewish school.”

The school stepped up security measures Monday, but Block, who noted that attendance was at 95%, said the school community was determined not to be afraid.

“It takes more than this to bring us down,” he said. “We’ve been kicking around for 3,500 years, you know.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that though the suspects aren’t affiliated with a hate group, such incidents could be the result of a pervasive, if limited, culture of bigotry.

“This is not a Buford Furrow incident, where you have an adult with a long history of association with organized hate, [who was] going out to try to commit a race war against Jews,” Cooper said, referring to an alleged white supremacist charged in the 1999 shooting attack at the North Valley Jewish Community Center and slaying of a Filipino American postal worker the same day. “But for the pro-racist bigots out there, they consider yesterday’s event as a great event.”

The vandalism was particularly painful, because much of the damaged equipment had been purchased as part of a major fund-raiser last spring, said Alan Shapiro, a founder of the school.

A Woodland Hills business donated $5,000 toward repairs, he said.

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Richard Fausset is a Times correspondent.