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Mostly Cloudy Political graffiti found on three North Shore District schools
In an email to North Shore Central School District parents on Monday morning, Superintendent Dr. Peter Giarrizzo informed them that North Shore High School and Glen Head and Glenwood Landing elementary schools had been defaced with politically themed graffiti on Sunday night.
Thirteen of the high school’s doors had been spray-painted with “Trump” or “MAGA,” Giarrizzo told the Herald Gazette, and the front door of Glenwood Landing and the garage door of Glen Head Elementary had also been marred, though paint had been splashed over the graffiti at the elementary schools to cover it up. It was unclear whether that was done by the same people who sprayed the original markings, or by someone else.
The vandalism at the elementary schools was caught on security cameras, Giarrizzo said, adding that he was working with the Nassau County Police Department and district security personnel to identify the culprits.
“It’s really upsetting to me,” Giarrizzo said on Monday. “Our schools are a community resource. They are funded by everybody who lives here, so they belong to all of us. To have, regardless of the content, someone come and deface them is disrespectful to the community, to the students who attend them and it’s a waste of resources that we have to [use] to remedy them.”
According to the NCPD’s Public Information Office, spraying graffiti is classified as criminal mischief, which can be a felony or a misdemeanor depending on the degree.
Custodians spent much of the day on Monday cleaning the graffiti off the doors of the high school, Giarrizzo said, and the district was not yet sure how to address the paint on the elementary schools, because there was so much of it. Security would be increased at all of the schools, he said.
Board of Education President Dave Ludmar said that regardless of its political message, the vandalism was a criminal act, and he hoped that whoever was responsible would be caught and brought to justice.
He and Giarrizzo both noted that it was a shame to have custodians spend their day cleaning graffiti, and that their focus on extraneous work could be detrimental to the schools during the coronavirus pandemic. Custodians play a large role in keeping schools safe and hygienic, Ludmar said, which is more important now than ever.
“It’s very disappointing that this would happen to our buildings,” he said. “That our custodians — who have spent so much time focused on keeping our buildings clean and safe for the health of our students, faculty and staff — have to be diverted from their great work to clean graffiti off of our buildings is very disappointing.”
Ludmar said that school is a place where students and staff should feel safe, and that incidents like these can compromise those feelings. “The country’s at a very tense place right now,” he said. “I really hope that whatever happens on Election Day, we’re able to stay united as a community and recognize that we’re all neighbors who have to live together and coexist despite our differences.”
