Tips sought about vandalism at three Garden City schools

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Garden City school officials are hoping the public can provide tips about who vandalized three school buildings.

Director of Student Services Stanley Szczotka said he was disappointed to see the damage caused by vandals, during his periodic canvassing of school buildings. He doesn’t know the exact dates that the vandalism occurred and added that it could have been over a repeated time period.

“At the start of the new school year, we want to put on a new face,” Szczotka said. “This is discouraging.”

District officials recently discovered vandalism at three buildings. The Farmington 5/6 Campus was vandalized by paint balls in the rear of the building. The Lathers Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten Campus was vandalized with graffiti and excessive litter in the rear courtyard. The Henry Ruff building was spray painted with graffiti on the back of its building.

“Graffiti and vandalism not only brings down the surrounding property values, it also costs the district time, money and resources,” Szczotka said. “This is a serious concern and disappointment to the district.”

Szczotka said the graffiti contained names and appeared to be different at the buildings. He didn’t scrutinize the writing for content.

Complete paint ball cleanup is easier to do than removing spray paint, because spray paint tends to leave a hazy trace behind, Szczotka said.

“This is not the image that we want to give our young children,” Szczotka said.

He added that youths gathering near Lathers has been a repeated problem and the district and the Garden City Police Department have been monitoring the situation.

Garden City Police Chief Robert Muery said that his department works closely with the school district.

“We do work closely with the schools and meet on a regular basis to identify and address problem areas,” said Garden City Police Chief Robert Muery. “The police department has actually gone door to door in certain areas where residents have an unobstructed view of a school building. We have told them of the problems and asked them to be our eyes and ears to help protect those facilities.”