Reynold’s Secondary School in Saanich was vandalized sometime on Wednesday night or Thursday morning, and the bill to repair the damage is almost $30,000.
Seamus Howley, director of facilities for the greater Victoria school district, said someone or a group of people, broke 15 windows around the school and 15 solar panels on the roof.
“The panels supported a program where students were able to observe and monitor the energy use within certain classrooms, and obviously now with the panels being damaged, they no longer have that access so it will curtail the program at the school,” said Howley.
While the school has been targeted by vandals before, Howley said this is not typical of what normally happens.
“It’s not typical at all, we do deal with broken windows, we do deal with graffiti,” he said. “This one is a step above, we don’t normally have vandalism of this nature on our roof.”
The cost to replace the windows is about $2,000, while the cost to replace the solar panels would be about $26,000
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The school is working with the Saanich Police, but there is no indication of who may be responsible for the damage.
“When we do have vandalism it typically appears in one area for a time and then disappears and shows up somewhere else,” said Howley.
“I would imagine they are upset at the loss,” he said, speaking of the students. “The school itself took great pride in bringing that program to the school, so clearly they would be disappointed that this has happened. That program is not available to them at this point.”
He said the district often deals with vandalism and can spend up to $200,000 a year fixing the problems.
Sgt. Steve Eassie of the Saanich Police Department also said this incident is unusual. “I mean there have been instances in the past where we’ve had schools where there’s been a large number of windows damaged, but clearly in this circumstance, with the damaging of the solar panels, it ups the ante considerably,” he said. “The solar panels I’m told can be worth anywhere from $500 to $1,000 per unit, and actually the numbers coming in now are even higher than that.”
There have been no other reports of vandalism in the area and police do not have any suspects.
Eassie said it appears the vandals used concrete from a nearby lumber yard as they were missing some small pieces of broken concrete.
He added if anyone hears about it or reads something on social media, they are asked to contact Saanich Police at 250-475-4321.
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