Home of the Sharks hit by vandals - again

by Krystal Paco
Guam - It's only the second day of classes and already problems plague Simon Sanchez High School. Vandals broke into the Yigo school late last night, disrupting today's instructional time.
At 6 this morning Sanchez High officials made their way to the campus to discover vandals struck again - this time not just administration offices, but in classrooms in the 100 Wing and 200 Wing. According to SSHS principal Beth Perez, the point of entry has yet to be confirmed but damages include broken doors, trashed classrooms, and graffiti.
She told KUAM News, "It's a very unfortunate situation for our students; this is the second day everything went well yesterday. I know that our students spirits were high after coming in after the shut down and us receiving the 'A', so this definitely dampens the spirits of our faculty and staff."
As the Guam Police Department's Crime Lab continues to investigate the crime scene, the young Sharks wait patiently in the cafeteria and gymnasium for DOE Interim Superintendent Taling Taitano to make the final decision on whether or not to send them home. DOE Facilities and Maintenance Manager Billy Cruz said, "It's hard to determine right now what was stolen in the classrooms and the office; they're still doing, they're investigation until that is completed we will send the teachers to go in and do the assessment of their classrooms to see what is missing."
At around 12 this afternoon, Crime Lab officials finished their investigation and teachers and students were released to their classrooms in time to catch the last period of the day. Recurring school breakins is a growing problem for the Department of Education.
According to Taitano, only some of the island's schools have security cameras, which were donated by local businesses. DOE will be looking into alternative funding to ensure remaining schools have security available to them. "The problem is our DOE budget is very tight almost all of our DOE budget is allocated towards personnel, so it'd be very hard at this point to get additional money for security. That's why we were hoping to use some of the ARRA money to put in security cameras or some other security system. We need to explore that. In the meantime, we need to work closely with people in our community the Mayor's Office and GPD to see if we can work together to address this problem."
Overall, it's the students that suffer from these recurring acts of vandalism. Carpentry teacher Ron Santos had his workshop broken into earlier this year, losing over $3,000 of tools and equipment. "Oh God, it really kind of makes me feel disgusted because we're trying to actually get these kids ready prepared for jobs and stuff, especially construction trades. A lot of these kids really like my class, it's hard on them, we gotta replace the tools. We're talking table saws and stuff."
Taitano added, "The vandalism at the school is not a DOE problem and I think the community needs to come together to deal with that issue."