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Coping with the Rising Tide of VandalismAwake!—1974 | August 22
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AT A Philadelphia school youngsters smashed 170 windows, cut telephone lines and spattered paint over classrooms. The damage cost $10,000 to repair and forced the school to close for a day.
Students at a St. Louis elementary school went on a rampage, throwing more than a hundred desks through windows and pushing a piano down a flight of stairs.
In Toronto, Canada, a police officer said regarding the frenzied destruction upon a school there: “It was like the set of a bombed-out building, straight out of a war movie.”
It would be bad enough if these were rare incidents. But they are not. According to a special report developed by the staff of Education U.S.A., school vandalism has gained “the magnitude of a national dilemma.”
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Coping with the Rising Tide of VandalismAwake!—1974 | August 22
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A Staggering Cost
The total bill for vandalism is gigantic. In one year alone 243,652 windows were broken in New York City schools! National losses to U.S. schools are estimated to be $200 million annually owing to window breakage, theft and arson. But other authorities say that this is a “grossly understated” figure, since there are other losses.
For example, in 1969 the loss from vandalism in New York City schools was reported to be $2,266,025. But Hugh McLaren, Jr., executive director of New York City’s Office of School buildings, noted that this did not include the expense of repairing defaced walls and desks, broken furniture and fixtures. He said that, if such expenses were included, “the total would be three times the amount quoted in the report.”
But there is another major expense: Maintaining a school security force. In 1971 New York City schools more than doubled the size of their security force at an expense of $1 million. Los Angeles schools, too, spend over $1 million a year for security agents. In New York schools police officers sometimes register as students and attend classes.
Whatever is the cost of school vandalism—some say it is “close to half a billion dollars annually”—the bill cannot be calculated simply in dollars and cents. The fear and tension created by the destruction, or threat of destruction, interferes with education and can even contribute to illnesses. All this cost to schools is only part of the total bill of vandalism.
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Coping with the Rising Tide of VandalismAwake!—1974 | August 22
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What Is Needed?
Many efforts are being made to reverse the tide. Difficult-to-break plastic is replacing glass in school windows. Hard-finish epoxy-resin paints are being used on interior walls that resist markings with felt-tip pens, lipstick and crayons. New schools are being built like fortresses, with few, if any, exterior windows. Alarms, fences, night lighting, guard dogs—all these measures and more have been employed. Yet vandalism increases.
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