Vandals broke into a South Los Angeles elementary school for the sixth time since July over the weekend, causing an estimated $115,000 in damage and adding to a steady toll of recent losses due to theft and vandalism in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
This semester alone, there have been 171 incidents of burglary and vandalism in the nation’s second-largest school system, with Wadsworth Elementary School, the site of a Monday news conference, particularly hard hit. Districtwide, damage runs into the millions of dollars a year, officials said, although they did not release specific figures.
Superintendent of Los Angeles Schools. Alberto Carvalho acknowledged that this was an issue that the school system generally avoided highlighting.
Authorities inspect damage caused by a break-in at Wadsworth Elementary School.
(Howard Blume/Los Angeles Times)
“We don’t want negative news, do we? » said Carvalho. “We don’t necessarily talk about it, but targeting, burglarizing, vandalizing, stealing from poor schools is reprehensible. So I want to make sure the community is aware and hopefully someone will come forward with some information.
The damage estimate could increase in Wadsworth once the inventory is complete, which may have to wait several days as schools begin their Thanksgiving break week.
The break-in happened on Sunday. Principal Jenny Guzman-Murdock said she was at the school as recently as Saturday.
Although the campus is secure, it lacks a burglar alarm and security cameras have arrived but have not yet been installed. Some schools already have such systems and there are plans to install them on all campuses, at significant cost.
The vandals apparently used heavy tools to open the deadbolt, metal-reinforced doors, causing significant damage to the doors. In total, 24 rooms were broken into, Guzman-Murdock said.
Some staff showed up to quickly clean up, including community representative Maricela Almaraz, who restored order to the parent center because, she said, she didn’t want parents to see the damage.
No one had yet arrived in a second-floor classroom that was a mess, with pencils, books and papers thrown on the floor and chairs overturned. Graffiti tore up a wall just outside the classroom.
Mother Bertha Cuevas said the vandalism made her angry and worried.
“It feels like the kids are going to have too much brain trauma,” said Cuevas, who stood outside campus with her third-grade son and freshman daughter. “And I don’t think that’s true. I think this school needs to have security cameras on the street, in every part of the school.
Cuevas praised the school for its attention to children with special needs.
Among LAUSD schools, Wadsworth Elementary was hit particularly hard.
(Howard Blume/Los Angeles Times)
Ensuring the security of buildings and properties is an additional challenge on top of the school system’s security puzzle.
Student activists and some parents have called for the elimination of all school police — saying education funds should instead go to counselors, mental health and achievement programs. In response to these calls, the Board of Education voted in 2020 to cut school police funding by 30%.
But even at its largest, the school police were never big enough to patrol around the clock on some 1,000 campuses in the sprawling district. Instead, Carvalho said, campus security needed to be strengthened through a combination of measures.
“I think the solution is additional oversight, better community relations, additional information brought to us by community members,” he said. “We have a pretty good idea that it’s not strangers – from outside the community – who are coming. These are individuals who likely live in the community. And we hope that this call will lead to someone who knows something coming forward with information.
He drew particular attention to the district’s LASAR application, which stands for Los Angeles Schools Anonymous Reporting. Carvalho stressed that tracks reported on LASAR could remain anonymous.
Stolen laptops are clearly marked as LA Unified property and can be turned off remotely, he added, making them of little use to thieves. But when they are recovered – even if they are subsequently abandoned – they still have to be replaced at considerable cost, representing a loss of money for education.
Some incidents appear to be linked to professional jobs “largely attributable to organized crime,” Carvalho said. “So the theft of copper, the theft of catalytic converters. There are adult criminal entities organizing this, and we also want to raise community awareness about this, which can help “bring those responsible to justice.”
There’s really no one monitoring security cameras in schools, but they are potentially useful for deterrence and evidence-gathering purposes after the fact. Anti-theft alarms are also a deterrent.
School police, even in their reduced form, have vacancies. The current strategy is to almost exclusively use officers for patrols and emergency situations during school hours.
Los Angeles Unified has been hit by an increase in crime and violence since students returned to in-person learning after campuses closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although a large group of pro-police parents advocate maintaining the police department, there are currently not enough officers to patrol the campus at the level before the cuts. And there is only a skeleton crew outside of opening hours.
An April report listed 382 positions in the police department, of which 323 were filled.
Carvalho said he may need to deploy officers around the clock in sensitive areas, including bus stations, to protect assets such as bus catalytic converters.
