News that vandals struck Harwood Union this week and caused significant damage to the school and the school grounds is sickening and disturbing.
This is no senior prank – it is serious, willful, malicious destruction of public property and it will cost every one of us in many ways.
It costs students time that they need to be in classes preparing for exams. It costs student athletes time and their opportunities to compete with their peers throughout the state.
It costs teachers in lost lesson plans. It costs the cafeteria in wasted or spoiled food. It means two more days of school in a year that has already had its fair share of snow days. It will cost parents time at work to deal with kids who are not at school.
And it will cost taxpayers, of course, and it will cost an insurance company.
The senseless nature of this apparently very well thought out plan that involved duct-taping sink and water fountain drains is also troubling. That destruction at our public high school took a lot of forethought and a lot of effort – 8,000 gallons of water flooded the school. That takes time and effort.
The school’s exterior security cameras were working and there’s no word yet on the interior cameras.
Let’s hope the school’s interior security cameras were functioning and these disrespectful criminals were caught on tape and will be brought to justice.
Hopefully, whoever these miscreants are, they will be required to cover the costs of the cleanup and publically apologize not just to students, faculty and staff but all the taxpayers. Hopefully, when they are apprehended and dealt with by our criminal justice system, the punishment will suit the crime.
That school belongs to all of us and it is where we entrust our children to be safe and to learn. To have our school so stupidly damaged is offensive and insulting.
That was not funny. It was sickening.
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