Wasted opportunity to teach a lesson

Broad daylight showed two teenage boys dressed in black on top of our neighborhood elementary school.

It was a beautiful sunshine-filled Saturday afternoon. What was going on? My kids and I were enjoying the playground when my youngest daughter called my attention to the adolescents walking across the roof.

I made a call, and within a half hour the two were caught inside the school by a kind and brave husband of a resident teacher. The trespassers had gained entry and were going through the classrooms. It is fortunate they were caught, but to my dismay they were only given a verbal warning.

After the destruction in Willow (at Willow Elementary School), I would think that an incident of trespassing inside a school would be treated extremely seriously. Gone are the days when kids would toilet-paper some trees and call it a day. Now we know that kids can cause so much damage that the school can be spending months cleaning up the mess and years paying the bill.

Teachers are the victims in these crimes. Elementary classrooms are filled with curricula, toys, posters, books and many more items that have been purchased from a teacher’s own private monies. These teaching tools may add up to hundreds of dollars, and usually more.

Also, these boys were aware that my kids and I were there and still they continued to go about their menacing plan. This in itself was a bold act, so I doubt they are through committing crimes. Alaska State Troopers had an opportunity to send a strong message to these boys that breaking into schools will not be tolerated. The opportunity was squandered.

Now, instead of possibly performing community service, the carefree days of summer are wide open to these juvenile trespassers.

Kathleen Yerbich

Wasilla