Burglars, vandals have attacked LAUSD schools 171 times since August

Vandals broke into a South Los Angeles elementary school for the sixth time since July over the weekend, causing an estimated $115,000 in damage and adding to the ongoing toll of recent theft and vandalism in the LA Unified School District.

This semester alone there have been 171 incidents of burglary and vandalism at the nation's second-largest school system, with Wadsworth Elementary, the site of Monday's news conference, the hardest hit. In the entire village, the damage is in the millions of rands per year, officials said, although they did not release specific figures.

LA Schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho admitted that it is a problem that the school system often avoids highlighting.

“We don't want bad news, do we?” Carvalho said. “We don't talk about it, but targeting, breaking into, destroying, stealing from poor schools – that's a crime. So I want to make sure the public knows about it, and hopefully someone will provide information.”

The damage estimate could rise in Wadsworth once the inventory is completed, which may have to wait a few days because schools have already started their week-long Thanksgiving break.

The burglary happened on Sunday. Principal Jenny Guzman-Murdock said she had been at the school as recently as Saturday.

Even though the center is closed a lot, it doesn't have a burglar alarm, and security cameras have arrived but haven't been installed yet. Some schools already have such programs and there are plans to install them on all campuses at great cost.

Vandals apparently use heavy tools to pry open dead-bolted, steel-reinforced doors – doing a lot of damage to the doors. In all, 24 rooms were broken into, Guzman-Murdock said.

Some workers were seen to clean up quickly, including the public lawyer Maricela Almaraz, who returned the situation to the parents' center because, she said, she did not want the parents to see the damage.

No one had come to the classroom on the second floor which was a mess, crayons, books and papers were thrown on the floor and chairs were overturned. Graffiti defaced the wall just outside the classroom.

Parent Bertha Cuevas said the vandalism made her angry and scared.

“It's like the kids are going to have a lot of trauma in their minds,” said Cuevas, who was standing outside the center with his third-grade son and first-grade daughter. “And I don't think that's right. I think this school should have street security cameras in every part of the school.”

Cuevas praised the school for paying attention to children with special needs.

Among LAUSD schools, Wadsworth Elementary has had the most problems.

(Howard Blume / Los Angeles Times)

Keeping buildings and structures secure is one more challenge added to the school system's security puzzle.

Student activists and other parents have called for an end to all school police — saying education dollars should be spent on counseling, mental health and achievement programs. In response to these calls, the Board of Education voted in 2020 to cut school police funding by 30%.

But even at the largest level, the school police were not large enough to patrol around the clock on about 1,000 campuses in the growing region. Instead, Carvalho said, institutional security should be improved through a combination of measures.

“I think the solution is more oversight, better public relations, more information brought to us by members of the public,” he said. “We have a good idea that these are not outsiders – from outside the community – coming in. These are people who may be living in the community. And we hope that this complaint goes to someone who knows something and brings us information.”

He called special attention to the district's LASAR application, which stands for Los Angeles Schools Anonymous Reporting. Carvalho emphasized that the lead reported to LASAR may not be known.

Stolen laptops are clearly marked as LA Unified property and can be remotely shut down, he added, making them less useful to thieves. But when they are taken — even when they are later discarded — they still have to be replaced at great expense, in lost education dollars.

Some of the incidents appear to be professional operations “driven more by organized crime,” Carvalho said. “So the theft of copper, the theft of catalytic converters. There are adults, criminal organizations that organize that, and we want to raise public awareness about that, which can help “bring those responsible to justice.”

No one can really monitor security cameras in schools, but they can be useful in interception and evidence gathering after the fact. Burglar alarms are also a deterrent.

The school police department – even in a reduced capacity – has vacancies. The current strategy is to use officers almost exclusively for patrols and emergencies during school hours.

Los Angeles Unified has been plagued by an increase in crime and violence since students returned to in-person learning after the campus was closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even if a large group of parents who support the police succeed in saving the police department, there are currently not enough officers to patrol the campus at a pre-reduction level. And there is only a team of skeletons after hours.

The April report listed 382 police department positions, of which 323 were filled.

Carvalho said it may be necessary to deploy more police around the clock in sensitive areas, including bus yards, to protect equipment such as catalytic converters on buses.