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Elementary school vandalized

Forty-nine windows were smashed at Takhini Elementary, early Thursday morning. "It's disappointing," said vice-principal Melanie Bennett who found the broken glass when she opened the school at 6:45 a.m.
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Forty-nine windows were smashed at Takhini Elementary, early Thursday morning.

“It’s disappointing,” said vice-principal Melanie Bennett who found the broken glass when she opened the school at 6:45 a.m. “It’s awful.”

Every single window at the front of the school was broken, affecting two classrooms, two offices, the library and an assisted-learning room. No rocks or objects were found that could have broken through the glass, leaving school staff to assume the vandals used a bat or something, said Bennett.

“It’s disrupted the school,” she said, adding that they held an assembly yesterday to talk with the 150 students about what happened. “There were quite a few emotions yesterday. There is a lot of pride in our school. The kids were disappointed someone would do this. But their first thought was, ‘What can we do to raise the money to fix the windows?’”

Workers have been putting in a lot of hours to get the classrooms back up and running by the end of the long weekend, said Bennett.

But the library will take much longer.

For some reason, the glass shot across the whole library, she said, adding that for safety reasons, cleaning must be extremely thorough and crews are in the process of taking every single book off the shelves.

“I’m shuddering at the thought of how much it will cost,” she said, pointing to the approximately three-foot-long, two-foot-wide windows that stripe the walls.

And while it was only the bottom panels that were broken, the entire window - inside and outside layers - will need to be replaced, Bennett said.

The costs will be shouldered by the Department of Education, they confirmed this morning, but they are still working on an estimate of how much that may be.

Police do not have any leads or witnesses at this time but encourage anyone

with any information, to come forward.