MASSACHUSETTS SCHOOL COMPUTER STOLEN http://www.salemnews.com/local/x535467828/Computer-cameras-money-stolen-from-school
Computer, cameras, money stolen from school
SALEM — The Greenhouse School was robbed yesterday.
The private grade school serving about 25 students, many from low-income families, lost an estimated $8,000 in an overnight robbery, according to a school official.
"The first thing we noticed was the electronics," said Co-Director Dan Welch, who discovered the theft when he entered the Loring Avenue school around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday with his wife, Co-Director Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde.
Gone was a computer, a video camera, a digital camera, a radio and other equipment, Welch said.
"It's very disheartening because we don't have much stuff to begin with," he said in an e-mail.
The thief, or thieves, took about $50 from a jar where students were saving money to give to a poor school in Haiti that was devastated in the January earthquake. Earlier, The Greenhouse School sent about $500 to the SOPUDEP School in Haiti.
"It was like a piggy bank, or a glass jar, in the middle of the room," Welch said. "Julia noticed it was empty."
Some of what was taken had Welch laughing in disbelief. While searching through the room, he said his wife yelled out, "They took the snacks."
Upon hearing that, a student responded, "What are they going to have, a party?" according to Welch.
It appeared someone gained access through a side door, police said.
The school official said he was grateful the building was not ransacked.
Welch said he hadn't totaled all the losses but estimated it was about $8,000.
"We'll get over that," he said.
What bothered him more was the idea that someone would steal from a small school that operates on a shoestring budget, a school that his late mother, Patricia Jennings-Welch, founded more than 30 years ago inside an old greenhouse.
In the e-mail, Welch said the incident "leaves a bad taste, more than the usual robbery. Imagine, stealing food from little kids."
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