Sometime on the April 29 weekend, someone either alone or with accomplices vandalized the Mile 108 Elementary School, breaking windows in the kindergarten-Grade 1 class, then reached into the classroom and picked up a tray bean plants and destroyed them.
"The students had planted and patiently watered the plants for two weeks," primary science teacher Julie Schuurman says, adding this was the second time windows have been broken.
On Monday morning, the children were very eager to see the plants that had just started poking through the dirt, what they saw was a boarded up window.
"I wanted to share with the community through the Free Press what it was like to explain to 21 little kindergarten and Grade 1 students that their plants had been carelessly destroyed."
The students were understandably upset and disappointed, and they couldn't understand why someone would do this, Schuurman says, adding she couldn't explain it away.
At home that evening they told their parents, the teacher notes.
"The parents and the community quickly helped the students, kindergarten-Grade 1 teacher Meagan Vandekerckhove says, adding they donated tomatoes and flowers and a nursery donated strawberry plants.
The students were pretty excited about the plants, and made thank-you cards stating how happy these people made them feel with the plant donations."
This is very traumatic for the students, besides being costly to the school district, principal Kevin McLennan says, adding there have been about four or five vandalism incidents recently.