VANDALISED
Senseless destruction of school property
The vandal behind two acts of senseless destruction against a primary school’s outdoor classroom is urged to fess up.
Roslyn School’s outdoor classroom is a space on the school’s field, landscaped for classes to sit outside to learn and for children to use at lunchtimes.
Teacher Mandy Veza said it was opened about four weeks ago, and the children helped plan it, build paths, install a wooden bridge and plant native tree seedlings worth about $900.
On Sunday morning, her son, groundskeeper Jake Veza, was ‘‘gutted’’ to find many of the seedlings had been ripped out and strewn about. He replanted the damaged plants and hoped they would survive.
But on Tuesday morning, staff found the destruction had been repeated overnight, even more plants were pulled up and parts were torn off their ‘‘musical wall’’ of recycled items that make noises.
The plants were replanted again, but Jake Veza said some were so damaged many had started to die.
Initially, it was thought the damage was likely done by young people, but when staff checked security footage, they saw the same man heading toward the outdoor classroom each time the damage was done.
‘‘I just burst into tears,’’ Mandy Veza said. ‘‘It’s absolutely mindless. There’s no rhyme or reason to why he’d do this. It’s really nasty. He brings his dogs and they pooed in here too.
‘‘The kids are really upset about it.’’
The outdoor classroom was started to encourage children to get outdoors more, she said, but the school wanted it to be used by the community too.
A group of seniors take books to the outdoor classroom at lunchtimes to read to the younger children, ESOL parents bring their children to read stories, the kindy kids next door talk to Jake Veza about the plants as he works on the garden, and an autistic boy comes out to lay on the bridge and look at the clouds.
‘‘It’s pretty sad,’’ 11-year-old Zac Mcrae said, ‘‘I was a little bit p ..... off because we’d done heaps of stuff to make it.
‘‘They wouldn’t like it if someone came and wrecked their coolas garden.’’
Jordan Foot, 8, said the vandal should talk to the police because destroying their classroom garden was ‘‘not very nice’’.
‘‘If we catch them, maybe they would go to jail, or maybe they would have to go back to school.’’
The school would have to fundraise to repair the damage and staff were now hesitant about further development, in case more was damaged, Mandy Veza said.