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Burglary, racist LAHAINA >> Students, parents and teachers at a new private school in West Maui were shocked and saddened by the burglary and vandalism at the school, including the profanity and racial slur written on a blackboard about slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
vandalism hit
Maui school
Suspects steal computers from and scrawl
racial slurs at West Maui Carden AcademyBy Gary T. Kubota
gkubota@starbulletin.comA portrait of King hung above the blackboard next to a picture of President Abraham Lincoln was torn down and ripped to pieces.
"I can't believe this would happen to a school," said Marjorie Deigert-Richardson, director of the West Maui Carden Academy in Lahaina. "I was very sickened to see that this kind of thing still exists in our society."
Also scrawled on the blackboard were the words "white power" and "KKK," an acronym for the Ku Klux Klan. Maui Police Lt. Lenie Lawrence said detectives were investigating the break-in but had no suspects.
The school, with an enrollment of 50 students from kindergarten to third grade, had been studying King's life as a part of Black History Month.
It has been a rough first year for the school, which opened in September in a building once used as a Japanese language school at the Lahaina Hongwanji Mission on Wainee Street. On Jan. 29 a flood caused an estimated $16,000 in damage to school supplies, books and computers, Deigert-Richardson said.
She said this week's burglary, which occurred between 5 p.m. Wednesday and 7 a.m. Thursday, included the theft of five laptop computers valued at about $9,000.
Deigert-Richardson said the flooding and burglaries have put extreme pressure on the school's finances, and students have appealed to the community to find the computers.
She said a couple from Arizona who live part time on Maui donated $1,000 yesterday, and student James Keyhani, who was passing out fliers publicizing the thefts, collected $80 in donations from 70 residents in his neighborhood.
Keyhani, 7 and a first-grader at the school, said he was saddened at the loss of the computers because he and other students had been working on writing stories and designing pictures for books.
"We were doing the digital pictures, and we were going to be done," Keyhani said.
Teacher Jeri Miyamoto said personal items were stolen, including a pencil box and valentine belonging to one of the students and money that the students had used to pay for ice pops.
She said the refrigerator was unplugged, allowing the ice treats to melt.
"We were actually quite shaken up," she said. "It was a visual shock. It seemed very spiteful."
Hongwanji volunteer Sammy Kadotani said he was disappointed and sad about the burglary and the fear it was causing in the community.
"You don't know who to blame," he said.
Wendy Laurel, whose son Nalu attends kindergarten at the school, said picking a school for kids as a target for a burglary seemed "so unbelievable, done by someone who doesn't have a conscience."
School officials said teachers have talked with students about the burglary and used the incident to illustrate the importance of honesty and respect for other people's property.
"They've learn to grow from it," Miyamoto said.
Deigert-Richardson said one of the main reasons for establishing the school was to reduce overcrowding in classrooms in Lahaina. She said there were no signs of forced entry and that whoever entered the classrooms took the most valuable computers and left an older model.
"They knew what they wanted," Deigert-Richardson said. "They knew how to go and get it."
The iBook computers have digital pictures of students displayed on the monitor. The five computers had the serial numbers UV130JELCC, UV1370JXLCC, UV1370JKLCC, UV1370JVLCC and UV1370K6LCC.
Anyone with information about the burglary can call Lahaina police at 808-661-4441.