Students and staff at Quinson Elementary came back from the long weekend to find the school vandalized.
Some of the exterior walls were painted with graffiti and vulgar language sometime over the weekend. Just over a month ago, Van Bien Elementary School was hit with graffiti right before students returned from the summer break.
Tim Bennett, Chair on the Board of Education of School District No. 57, said the money that gets spent cleaning graffiti up would be better spent on other education leads for students in the district.
“It’s always unfortunate and when something like this happens and the district is quick to respond to ensure that graffiti is covered up or windows are replaced and to ensure that our buildings are happy, healthy, places for our students to learn,” he told MyPGNow.
“We are working with our facility staff, our security companies and RCMP on it. It’s just a huge impact on our taxpayers.”
Bennett said the costs of covering up the graffiti are taken from the Annual Facility Grant, which is typically well utilized with building upgrades and the like for their students.
“Our maintenance staff did an incredible amount of work over the summer painting, installing new gym floors, roofing projects, heating upgrades,” adding that sometimes graffiti can be dealt with in house, but it still takes from resources that could be used better elsewhere.
“When we have to pull staff off from projects to deal with graffiti it’s not a good thing for our students across the district,” said Bennett.