Vandals target schools
Schools in the Motueka area have been targeted by vandals, causing hundreds of dollars’ worth of damage.
Tasman School had its potting shed door kicked in, a water tank smashed and electric bells ripped from a deck ceiling during a break-in on either Friday or Saturday.
Just down the road at St Peter Chanel Catholic School in Motueka, vandals flipped and damaged six picnic tables, and smashed the toughened glass on the school noticeboard.
Tasman School deputy principal Tim Hikuroa said a garden pick from the school’s potting shed was used to attack the brand new water tank.
He said it was the first time the primary school, which has about 110 pupils, had been vandalised in the five years he had been there.
‘‘We’re such a safe little school. People don’t really know we’re here.
He said he was ‘‘just sad, really – sad that it’s been targeted, and sad that it possibly could be someone in the region’’.
The school was closed for a teacher-only day last Friday, and the attack could have happened then or on Saturday, Hikuroa said. Police visited the school on Monday.
St Peter Chanel principal Marg Campbell-McCauley said the destruction at her school was wanton and upsetting.
She found six of eight heavy picnic tables flipped when she went to the school early on Saturday afternoon.
Later that afternoon, parts of the bench seating were smashed off, and the brand new noticeboard glass was broken, Campbell-McCauley said.
‘‘They must have come back with a hammer or something. It was pretty bold to have done it in the middle of the day, and to have come back again.’
Four of the benches, used by children to eat their morning tea and lunch on, were bought earlier this year with money from parents’ fundraising efforts.
A parent fixed the tables on Sunday, and new glass had been ordered for the noticeboard, Campbell-McCauley said.