Sagle Elementary hit hard by vandalism
Sagle Elementary School custodian Clyde Callen peers into a 1,000-gallon cistern, past the cistern’s lid that vandals had removed, causing a potential safety hazard. (Photo by RALPH BARTHOLDT)
SAGLE — Clyde Callen attended Sagle Elementary as a boy in the 1950s.
He is vested. And he is the head custodian at the school.
Therefore, when someone vandalizes the building or the grounds, Callen is on high alert.
He has been on alert since October when he documented the first incident of vandalism at the small school on Sagle Road.
Since then, there have been between five and 10 incidents that, he said, occur about twice per month.
A tetherball was stolen from the playground, screens on the library windows were slashed, vandals threw orange traffic cones onto the school’s roof and stole the American and a POW flag from the pole out front, including the ropes and rigging.
On the east side of the building vandals recently stacked picnic tables and climbed them to get on the building’s low roof.
A teacher’s aide noticed a mix of chairs, recycle bins and milk crates on the roof when she arrived Tuesday morning.
“It’s been a recurring problem,” Principal Marshall Mayer said.
Pend Oreille School District Facilities Director Sid Rayfield called the sheriff’s office to report the incidents and urged the department to increase patrols in the area. In addition, the district is offering a $250 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators.
On one occasion, he said, vandals managed to shut off the power at the school.
“If they had done it when it was very, very cold,” he said, “that wouldn’t have been funny at all.”
He fears the perpetrators’ fun is turning malicious. They removed the lid on an underground storage tank that could have resulted in the injury of a child, he said.
“They are getting quite brazen,” he said.
There have been other incidents of vandalism at outlying schools in the district. On one occasion two years ago, the windows in some district school buses were smashed.
He figures the damages in the latest round of vandalism will cost the district around $500 to replace the flags and hire a lift to put them back on the pole.
The district purchased cameras to monitor activities at other schools. He hopes it won’t come to that here.
“It costs several thousand dollars for those cameras,” he said.
By offering the reward, he hopes someone will step forward with information.
For Callen, the vandalism is more personal.
He walked around the grounds pointing out places that vandals hit.
He stopped.
“I played baseball on that field,” he said pointing past a row of tamaracks the needles of which cover the school playground.
Back then, kids wouldn’t think of injuring a school.
“This is just plain destruction,” he said.