SCHOOL `HATE CRIME' VANDALS TRASH CLASSROOMS, COMPUTERS AT ELEMENTARY.

Byline: Greg Botonis and Marci Wormser Staff Writers

PALMDALE - Vandals caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage at a Palmdale elementary school, smashing computers, scrawling obscenities on walls and blackboards and shredding books and papers.

Twenty-three classrooms, the library and administrative office were vandalized. Ana Verde Plaza school officials said they could not estimate the monetary loss, but sheriff's deputies said it probably topped $20,000 to $30,000.

``We are pretty devastated,'' Principal Todd Cherland said Tuesday. ``In my mind, vandalism is a crime. It's a hate crime.''

Neighbors called sheriff's deputies after seeing three teenage boys on the school grounds just before 5 p.m. Monday, a school holiday. The boys were gone when deputies arrived. School security guards also arrived, alerted by a burglary alarm.

Deputies said they were trying to identify the teens, based on descriptions from neighbors.

The vandals smashed classroom computers and poured coffee and sprayed fire extinguisher chemicals into them, bashed TV screens and monitors, stole candy and money from teachers' desks, poured glue into keyboards, destroyed a teacher's personal laptop and dumped racks of books onto the library floor.

Monday's vandalism was not an isolated event, Cherland said. Vandals have scrawled graffiti, including swastikas, around the campus on weekends for 11 weeks, but until Monday they never broke into buildings.

Neighboring Summerwind Elementary School has also been vandalized intermittently for the past few months, though it has had no break-ins, Principal Sandra Sellers said.

Vandals have climbed onto the roof and thrown rocks onto the school yard, drawn graffiti on school signs and changed lettering on the school kiosk to make obscene phrases, Sellers said.

``There seems to be a rash of it now,'' she said of graffiti vandalism.

Ana Verde Plaza and Summerwind sit at the end of a dead-end street, Summerwind Drive, and border a dry creek bed and open fields.

Pupils at Ana Verde Plaza spent most of Tuesday morning cleaning their classrooms, Cherland said.

``We're getting back to academics again,'' he said Tuesday afternoon.

However, Cherland said his students ``feel violated.''

Cherland said he thinks the vandals broke into the administration building first and obtained keys to the portable classrooms. Some classroom windows were also broken.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Palmdale sheriff's station at [phone].

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Isaac Barcelona, spokesman for the Palmdale School District, looks at the damage done to Room 27 at Ana Verde Plaza school.

(2) District spokesman Isaac Barcelona checks the door to a classroom that was damaged in a rampage by vandals.

(3) Room 26 was one of 23 classrooms at Ana Verde Plaza school that sustained damage during Monday's vandalism.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer