THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 18, 1996 TAG: 9605170008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Somebody is torching Virginia Beach schools, costing insurers - and ultimately the taxpayers - millions of dollars. Yet the public seems resigned to such vile acts of vandalism.
The same people who were fired up by former School Superintendent Sidney Faucette's financial shenanigans a year ago seem to be helplessly shrugging their shoulders over the third Beach school torched this year.
The public ought to be at least as outraged over millions of dollars' worth of fire damage as it was over $12.1 million in overspending last year. At least the public got something for its money with Faucette and friends.
Before this arsonist - or arsonists - can strike again, the school system must beef up security around all schools and portable classrooms. Since break-ins have preceded fires, it ought to be possible to catch arsonists in the act - if alarms and patrols are adequate. Cost estimates of installing sprinkler systems in every school should be drawn. Only 15 percent of Beach schools are fully fitted with sprinklers.
Residents need to be alert to suspicious characters near schools after hours, and parents need to keep track of their teenage children.
``We need the public to help,'' pleaded school spokesman Joe Lowenthal. ``There were houses as close as 50 yards to this latest fire, and yet no one saw anything.''
Arsonists seem partial to Virginia Beach schools. About nine school fires have occurred in Hampton Roads during the 1990s - five of them at the Beach.
Six years ago this month, fires were set at Bayside and First Colonial high schools. In 1993, a 14-year-old was prosecuted for arson after Virginia Beach Middle School was ransacked and torched.
By far the most-devastating blaze was the one that struck Princess Anne High School a few days before school was scheduled to start last September. The fire caused $7 million in damages and displaced thousands of students for the year. The building had no sprinklers.
Last month, someone set a fire in a First Colonial High School locker room. Fortunately, the fire was confined to that single room.
This latest blaze at Windsor Oaks Elementary School destroyed two portable classrooms - one of them a music room. Sadly, a piano was lost as were two $1,000 sets of coveted bell chimes, a gift for the students from the PTA.
Cowardly acts of vandalism like these - where deviants with matches slink into schools after dark with destruction in mind - are detestable.
When the arsonist decided to torch the portable classrooms at Windsor Oaks this week, he did more than just destroy a couple of modular buildings.
Inside those classrooms were not only musical instruments but work completed by learning-disabled and visually impaired kids. When the Windsor Oaks students arrived at school on Monday morning, they were taught a cruel lesson about crime.
May they soon learn about punishment, too. by CNB