Vandals strike at special school memorial garden dedicated to ill children
Vandals have struck at a special school and damaged a memorial garden designed for pupils to remember classmates who have died.
The memorial garden at Green Park School, Bilston, has not even officially opened yet and was only completed last week – but will now need repairing before the children can make use of it.
When staff left the school on Wednesday evening, everything was fine with the garden, but the caretaker found the damage first thing on Thursday morning, with staff left horrified by the discovery.
All of the pupils at the school have learning difficulties and some have life-limiting illnesses.
Staff hope that by making the public aware of what they do, vandals might leave them alone.
The school recently won £3,000 in the Express & Star Cash for Schools competition, money they had planned to use to buy specialist equipment.
Now however, these funds may need to be dipped into to fix the memorial garden.
Rachel Cartwright, school business manager said: "It hasn’t even been finished a week, and it's not even officially open yet.
"Our school supports children with severe and profound learning difficulties and some life-limiting illnesses, so, it is even more distressing that people in our local community would deprive our children and life enhancing and enriching experiences.
"The caretaker is trying to fix some of it the best he can, but we will have to reorder the Perspex glass that has been broken.
"We have managed to fix the water feature in the middle, they had tried to damage that as well but didn't cause lasting damage.
"It had been renamed the reflection area, and was for children to reflect on children who have passed away."
Staff at the school want to discourage those who did the damage from striking again, asking them to consider the results of their actions and the people they are actually affecting.
Rachel added: "Funds are limited, we expected maintenance costs, but didn’t expect within a week of it being finished it would need repairing.
"I want to discourage whoever is doing it, please just stop.
"They might see it as a victimless act, but if they understood that we are here to benefit young people from across the city, they might stop.
"All schools across our city are trying to provide enriching educational experiences, so if we could appeal to anyone that might be tempted to vandalise in the future, especially with the long Summer break approaching, to just stop and think about the consequences for school pupils."
