Worst Damage Can Be the Hurt, Fear and Anger

Matthew Notarianni was afraid to go to sleep after his first-grade classroom at Colfax Avenue School was wrecked by vandals. Scared that whoever ripped apart 17 classrooms over Memorial Day weekend might strike at his house, the 7-year-old did not want to close his eyes at night, lest he be caught off guard.

“I thought it was weird,” Matthew said about the destruction wrought by vandals at his North Hollywood school. “Most kids were afraid. I couldn’t believe that this could happen.”

Matthew’s response to school vandalism is not unusual, according to psychologists and school officials, who say that the psychological effect vandals and thieves have on children, teachers and parents is often more devastating than the physical damage.

“The biggest thing is not the financial loss,” said Joe Lucente, principal of Fenton Avenue School in Lake View Terrace, targeted repeatedly by thieves and vandals for two months earlier this year. “It’s terribly demoralizing, and it takes a long, long time for people to recover.”

The destruction of a classroom by vandals can undermine the sense of security that schools are supposed to foster, especially for younger children. “It’s devastating,” said Joe Fandey, a Los Angeles Unified School District counselor. “Children feel violated. It’s kind of like having your own house trashed.”

Fandey explained that although older students can relate a vandalism or theft to a real person, younger children often cannot. “Who knows what they’re thinking? But they notice. How can they not? It’s very unsettling.”

Matthew, for instance, had no idea who would want to wreck his classroom, and the idea that they might come back frightened him. “It looked like the work of an adult, but we didn’t know,” he said while adult volunteers repainted classrooms last weekend.

The arrest of three junior high school students, one of them a former student angry about his treatment at the school, eased the fears of students but prompted some parents and teachers to wonder why the children lashed out so angrily.

“It’s devastating as a parent to see something like this happen,” said Lissa Zanville, whose daughter attends Colfax. “It’s hard to imagine how much anger and hatred a child would have to have.”

But it is almost impossible to determine which child in a class of 30 will vent his or her anger by attacking a school, Fandey said. “In my opinion, there would be no way in the world to tell which child is the one,” he said.

For students at Mt. Gleason Junior High School in Sunland, where an arson fire wiped out the library, it was a relief of sorts when the three men arrested on suspicion of the crime were found to have no connection to the school. “It was a big relief to our faculty and student body when those people were taken into custody,” Principal Tom Rayburn said. “Our kids articulated that they were glad that it was not one of their own.”

And at Olive Vista Junior High School in Sylmar, the theft of a stereo system was especially upsetting. Last year, the students sold candy and magazine subscriptions to raise the money to buy the system, which was used for assemblies and to play music at lunch.

“It made me so mad,” Lara Gearhart, 13, said. “I felt almost like crying. I just don’t understand why people would do something like this. They’re just thinking about themselves and not everyone else.”