Special needs school burgled
BY NIKKI MACDONALD
LOW BLOW: Thieves have stolen specialist equipment from Ferndale School for special needs pupils. Board chairwoman Jacki Morris said it was 'gut-wrenching'.
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When Jacki Morris arrived at Ferndale School this morning to inspect the site's serious earthquake damage, what she found was far more distressing than the 15cm gash in the lawn.
The Merivale school for special needs children was burgled on Wednesday night. Windows were jemmied open, sheds and filing cabinets ransacked, and thousands of dollars worth of digital equipment taken.
The discovery left Morris - the school's board chairwoman and mother of 8-year-old autistic school pupil Matthew - numb with shock.
''It was gut-wrenching. We're more shocked than after the earthquake. That's something that nature does to you. But to think someone can do this, that's a completely different kettle of fish. It's so much harder to process. To a school that is not a school with a lot of money, when we are at our most vulnerable.''
The stolen equipment was used by speech therapists to assess the school's more than 100 pupils, who range in age from five to 21. Some cannot talk and require tube feeding.
The school was already struggling to deal with the implications of cracks in paths, bowed beams and buckled walls that have made the classrooms unusable until at least Wednesday. The theft would further set back the school's progress and would be another blow to already stressed families trying to explain to their children why they could not go to school, Morris said.
''Our kids are stressed out to the max as it is. My son was really upset this morning because he just wanted to go to school.''
Police were called but no fingerprints were found on the property.
- © Fairfax NZ News
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This is like adding fuel to fire.Hope civic sense prevails. Trust guilty will be caught and punished & Ferndale Schools special needs made good by the authorities
99.9% of Cantabrians show the world how disasters are dealt with. 0.1% (maybe) show their true values (blame someone else victim syndrome) they live by. Hunt them down, name & shame, don't listen to their whining (lawyers incl)& let the community decide. Maybe a good 'Smash 'em Bro!' moment on The Crowd goes Wild on Prime TV.
RE those guttless pepale that broke into the speacial needs chilldrens School in christchurch they are cowards as if Christchurch wasint going thouth enouth now with the earth quake and everything else being a mum of speacil needs son its wrong wht these crimms done how would they like it if jo blog went and done that to their house
May they and their families be cursed with bad luck until they return the stolen items
Some people are lower than low!!!! Just hope karma comes back and kicks them up the proverbial!!!
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As a mum of two students at ferndale school, the news of the break in was heart breaking. To the people/person that stole this equipment its just computers cameras etc but to the staff at ferndale it was hours of fundrasing, hundreds of hours of records, resources, photos & specialised programs that they wrote, modified & used everyday to help the nearly 120 children that they work with. For the parents its reminder that no matter how cruel & hard life already is for our children that there is always someone that thinks that they have more need & rights than our children. No one ever asks or deserves to have the challenges in life our children face, these are children that are unable to talk, walk, run around & ride a bike just be children. Yet the person that stole this equipment can do all these things & could even get a job & earn the money & buy their own equipment. Whoever did this robbed the staff & familys of ferndale of so much more than they will ever know or understand.