Oct. 17, 2005 – Thirteen hundred high school students were sent home Monday morning because vandals destroyed the pumps that provide the school's water.
Kurt Vialet, principal of the St. Croix Educational Complex, said that all his students and students at the adjoining St. Croix Vocational Education School were sent home at 9 a.m. School personnel spent the early part of the morning contacting parents and arranging for bus service for its students.
Vialet said both schools were vandalized over the weekend. At the complex, vandals broke into the pump rooms and destroyed the eight pumps used to distribute water to the schools. Vialet said the perpetrators, "pulled out electrical wires and gages" and smashed the pumps with "something very heavy."
Vialet also said several classrooms in the vocational school were vandalized. "They broke into several classrooms and destroyed equipment," Vialet said.
"There is no value to education in this community," Vialet said, adding that the people who vandalized the school "are sick."
Vialet said he and his staff are working to get the schools back in shape to conduct classes on Tuesday.
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