Nunavut principal speaks out after vandals ransack school supplies

Netsilik school principal Gina Pizzo said vandals damaged about $4,000 worth of supplies over the weekend. (PHOTO COURTESY OF NETSILIK SCHOOL)

The principal of Netsilik school in Taloyoak hopes parents in the Kitikmeot community will talk to their children about the destructive effects of vandalism.

That’s following a weekend incident when a number of local kids are alleged to have ripped apart two pallets of supplies stored outside the school, damaging an estimated $4,000 worth of materials.

Netsilik principal Gina Pizzo got a call early Oct. 4 from a maintenance worker who discovered the mess outside the school, which houses about 330 students from kindergarten to Grade 12.

“I got a call Sunday morning [saying] there’s a whole bunch of stuff tossed all over the playground area,” Pizzo said. “Some of it was stolen, some of it’s been wrecked beyond repair.”

The two pallets carried various different school materials, from textbooks to Halloween supplies and audio equipment for new listening centres.

The pallets were missing from an earlier order. Pizzo said, and were delivered later. She said school staff usually bring deliveries inside the building, but in this case, she wasn’t aware the two late pallets had been delivered.

“During the early hours of Sunday morning, people saw kids tearing the stuff up,” she said. “Some of them tried to intervene, but by that time, the damage had been done.”

Pizzo said that eye-witnesses have reported the names of the alleged offenders to police. The RCMP said Oct. 5 that the incident was under investigation, but no one has been arrested or charged in connection with the mischief.

There have been reports that other buildings in the community of about 900 people were also vandalized Oct. 4.

In the meantime, Pizzo has asked Netsilik teachers to speak to their students about vandalism and theft, and the effect it can have on the larger community.

“It’s public money that pays for things like schools, and when you have to pay to fix these things, that means that money won’t be used for other things,” Pizzo said. “We want these kids to understand that they’re hurting themselves.”

“It’s a safety issue too, for those children to be out in the middle of the night,” she added. “We have to trust that parents will talk about these things [with their children].”

Pizzo said she’s received a good response from the school community, who came out to help clean up the mess Oct. 4. School staff are now doing an inventory of recovered supplies to see what can be salvaged.

“I think every community in Nunavut experiences this kind of thing, we just haven’t had a real big act of vandalism like this in a while,” Pizzo said.

The incident comes a month after a major fire destroyed Peter Pitseolak high school in Cape Dorset.

Police have since charged three youths, aged 13 to 16, with arson with damage to property and arson with disregard for human life.