Schools join the fight against graffiti

Partnership with town, county will also increase drug awareness

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Combating graffiti and drugs will be among the top items on the agenda for the East Meadow School District this year.

The district and its Parent-Teacher Associations are planning to work closely with local government and law enforcement to take a more proactive and united approach toward the two issues that have plagued the community in recent months, starting with the distribution of fliers in the district’s nine schools asking residents to report graffiti vandalism.

In the last weekend of August, school officials said, ethnically charged graffiti was found on a fence near W.T. Clarke High School.

The partnership formed by the district administration, the Board of Education and the PTA Council with the Town of Hempstead, Nassau County and the county Police Department also represents a strengthening of the relationship between the school district and the community that many parents said had soured toward the end of the school year this spring.

The graffiti near W.T. Clarke High School last month was brought to the attention of school officials, who worked with police to remove it. “While it was not technically a fence on our property,” said Superintendent Leon Campo, “all of our children would have been exposed to this.”

But the district’s newly heightened awareness of the issue, he added, produced immediate results. “In the old days, this would have lasted a week or more,” Campo said. “So this is a rapid response, almost a SWAT team to remove graffiti. And that’s what we need.”

Making students aware as well is especially important, Campo said, because they are more likely to know who might be doing the graffiti. “They’re far more aware than adults are for something like this,” he said.

While graffiti has been a sporadic issue in East Meadow for years, the problem intensified earlier this year when markings began appearing on fences, buildings, utility boxes, mailboxes and street signs on several major local roads. In many instances, the graffiti lingered for weeks before being cleaned up.

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