Vandals Target School Technology Items

By Darcia Harris Bowman

It happened when Principal Ann C. Leonard was out of town.

On a warm summer night, two teenagers slipped through a roof-top air vent into J.H. House Elementary School in Conyers, Ga., and laid waste to the building. The area hardest hit was the school's media lab. There, the vandals tore wiring out of the ceiling, smashed fluorescent lights, and pulverized more than 20 computers, 14 overhead projectors, video equipment, and a copy machine, before emptying the contents of a fire extinguisher over the entire mess.

The bill from that one night...