A FURIOUS headteacher believes vandals who caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to a primary school’s library are harming his pupils’ progress.
Appeals have been made to try and track down those responsible for trashing the bus at Denton’s Greswell on three occasions and staff are working with police.
In one incident ‘You’re going to die little girl’ was even written inside one of several damaged books.
Despite help from nearby Denton Community College, children at Greswell no longer have access to a library and headteacher John Cooper spelled out the harm that may cause.
He told The Correspondent: “With regards to the vandalism, I am lost for words really.
“I see no benefit to anybody and struggle to understand what the people involved gain from this.
“Their actions will have a significant impact on the school budget.
“I wish the people involved knew the impact of their actions and hopefully the consequences will stop them doing anything like this again.
“We had two further break-ins and they ripped out all the lighting and electricity units and smashed windows.
“I estimate all the damage in total is going to cost us around £6,000 – £7,000 to have the bus back in use.
“The bus will be out of use for quite a while whilst we have the repairs done and increase the security. This means the children will not have their library during this period.
“Alongside this, a significant number of books have had to be thrown away because of the damage and graffiti written in them, which means the children have a limited choice of texts to choose from.”
The community around Greswell, on Percy Road, has rallied and is raising funds to cover at least some of the repairs.
More than £2,500 has so far been donated on an online page set up by Year 6 teacher and parent Rebecca Krool.
She wrote: “As everyone knows, schools rarely have any spare money to spend so money spent on repairing the bus and replacing the books will have to be taken from another budget, meaning another area of school life will be affected.
“Greswell children wrote to the bus company and got the bus donated. The school has since paid to have it refurbished into a useable library space. As a school we were very proud of the project.
“It is so disappointing and upsetting to see our bus treated with such disrespect and disregard.”
The response has at least enabled Mr Cooper to take something positive from a huge negative – he also says he has a number of names of those who may be involved after CCTV footage was posted on Facebook.
He added: “The response from the community has been absolutely fantastic. We really are overwhelmed by the kind donations.
“We are also receiving book donations and offers of help in fixing the electrics.
“We now have the names of a number of the children involved. These have been passed on to the police and they have visited school to gather evidence.
“A special thank you to Mrs Krool, who set up the page and has been instrumental in gathering the evidence and names we needed.
“The headteacher at Denton Community College has been helping us too.”