HAWAII (UPDATE) COMPUTERS STOLEN 

Principal: Children ones who suffer after theft
Laptop computers valued at $13,000?taken from Waihee
By LILA FJUIMOTO, Staff Writer
POSTED: November 10, 2009

WAIHEE - Some Waihee School students couldn't do online portions of their studies Monday and some teachers lost valuable lesson plans after laptop computers valued at about $13,000 were stolen in classroom break-ins over the weekend.

"It's just unfortunate that our kids have to suffer, being that we're trying so hard to give kids a great education with innovative curriculum," said Waihee School Principal Leila Hayashida. "When we get things like their computers taken away, it puts us a step back. It's violating for teachers and our kids. It's pretty desperate."

She said school officials were hoping to recover the laptops, which are believed to have been stolen between about 3 p.m. Friday and 7 a.m. Saturday.

The burglary was discovered Saturday morning when school officials showed up for an academic planning workshop on campus and noticed broken doorknobs to classrooms. Although Friday was a furlough day for teachers and students, the school's custodial staff was on campus until about 3 p.m., Hayashida said, and would have noticed the damage to the doorknobs.

"We have burglaries every year. It's usually not this bad," she said. "Usually, it's one or two classrooms. This time, it seemed like they went through the whole campus."

She said doorknobs were broken off classroom doors, with the thieves apparently bypassing rooms when they couldn't break in and moving on to other classrooms. The rooms weren't ransacked, she said.

Most of the laptops were taken from student work stations, Hayashida said, and a few laptops of teachers also were stolen. Also missing were a jar filled with M&M's and six decks of playing cards used in math classes.

Twelve classrooms were hit, most in portable buildings, Hayashida said.

She said the thefts "absolutely" affected students' education, with some in grades 2 to 5 unable to do online work portions of new math curriculum. The school purchased Apple MacBooks because the new curriculum programs couldn't be run on older computers and required upgraded technology, Hayashida said.

The stolen laptops, which had state of Hawaii inventory tags and were labeled "Waihee School," were bought this year and last year.

She said the teachers whose laptops were stolen lost lesson plans they had spent years preparing and developing. "A really sad thing is there were years and years of teacher files with their lesson plans on it and the materials they custom-made for their classrooms.

"That just demonstrates how violating it is. But despite that, our kids and their teachers - we still keep on moving and we will persevere."

After responding to the school Saturday morning, police checked with neighbors. No one reported anything suspicious, police said. An investigation is continuing.

Anyone with information about the break-ins can call police at 244-6400 or Maui Crime Stoppers at 242-6966. Callers to Crime Stoppers remain anonymous and are given a code number.

Crime Stoppers pays cash rewards of up to $1,000 for information leading to the arrest and indictment of people responsible for felony crimes.

Hayashida said school officials were still taking inventory Monday to determine what was missing.

In addition to having property stolen, the state incurred additional costs because Department of Accounting and General Services employees responded to secure the broken classroom doors Saturday and a locksmith was called to campus both Saturday and Sunday, she said.

The Waihee School burglary follows one that occurred between Oct. 22 and 24 at Lihikai School classrooms on South Papa Avenue in Kahului. Laptop computers were among property stolen in those break-ins.

* Lila Fujimoto can be reached at lfujimoto@mauinews.com.