The deflating morning ritual of a school caretaker
Mark Perry turns up to work at a central Hamilton school nervous about what he will find.
Some days it is shattered glass from windows and bottles. Other days it is damaged downpipes or a sandpit someone used as a toilet.
The mindlessness of the vandalism at a place where children go to learn and grow, frustrates him the most.
‘‘I get anxious in the morning to see what has happened.’’
On one occasion, the pupils painted a picnic table bright blue to cover graffiti
– the next morning Perry found it with chunks missing, hacked by what looked like a crowbar. The children were disappointed, he said. ‘‘Everyone is feeling pretty deflated. ‘‘I feel sad, angry.
‘‘The teachers here have so much to do without coming in the morning and helping to clean up broken glass in their classroom.’’
Perry, who has served at Whitiora School for about 16 years, said he had never seen constant vandalism like it.
The odd window would get broken in the past but now there was an incident every few days, he said.
Seven windows were broken the other week, and vandals tried to tamper with the locks and enter the classrooms.
The school’s sandpit had to be blocked off after someone used it as a toilet and there was constantly broken glass all over the school grounds.
On the other side of the block the school occupies is Ulster St and a strip of motels that are now home to emergency housing clients, and the issues echo those at the Seventh Day Adventist School in Fenton St in Rotorua.
The Rotorua school has spent $100,000 on security measures in the
wake of vandalism, drug taking, abuse and fights linked to Ministry of Social Development motel clients.
Whitiora School principal Te Haumoana Biddle said the school grounds were open – and he was determined to keep them that way.
The school was instead spending $10,000 on security cameras to try to deter the vandalism.
Families in Ulster St motels were packed into small rooms made for shortterm living, and Biddle wanted children to have a place to run and play.
‘‘We don’t want to put barriers between us and the community.
‘‘They have little space in emergency housing, we do like to have the space open.’’
He said the vandalism had only become a problem in the past month.
‘‘I am not sure what has changed,’’ he said.
It was not school children doing the damage but teenagers who were ‘‘not part of our school community’’.
‘‘We have never seen this kind of vandalism before.’’
It was frustrating, he said. And the money spent repairing damage was money the school would rather be spending on the children.
‘‘It is where our little people come to play, have fun and learn.’’
He urged people in the community to contact the police if they heard or saw anything happening within school grounds.