NEBRASKA COMPUTERS STOLEN FROM SCHOOL WOWT - News:

Burglars Target School
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The crooks who hit an area school may have been helped by last week's weather.

School officials didn't know they'd been burglarized until after they re-opened the building.

Now they're out thousands of dollars and want to catch a thief.

The burglars did more than steal some electronics from Heartland School.

They managed to turn back the hands of time.

Heartland School teachers have been forced back to pen and paper.

That’s because the dozen computers stolen belonged to the teachers.

Scott Carlson with Heartland School says "The computers were huge. They were, most of them were new laptops just put in the hands of teachers we haven't been there before with teachers having access to laptops."

And it will be a while before the teachers at Heartland School get that technology back.

The school is a non-profit organization and it uses all of its funds to educate students with behavioral problems.

Officials say money for another dozen new laptops just isn’t there now.

"We can't spend right now. We just spent up to where we were comfortable with laptops being in the hands of teachers for this year, so we won't spend any more right now."

The crooks were no amateurs.

"We believe they were experts," says Carlson.

School officials say they seemed to have taken exactly what they wanted leaving behind other older computers and electronics.

"The thieves actually cut the flat screen t.v. off the bracket without disturbing the lock. They also took the play station off the top of the cabinet but if you look down here, they didn't bother any of the video players or DVD players," Carlson says.

The burglars did leave something else behind. There are footprints on a chair they used to cut the flat screen off the wall.

Hopefully police can use them to catch the burglars.

Heartland School takes in students from 14 local districts. It currently has 67 students in the kindergarten through 12th grades.