TOLEDO, Ohio — Throughout the month of June, there were four break-ins reported at Autism Model School in west Toledo.
As of right now, the school is looking at an upwards of $30,000 worth of repairs.
The pandemic has already given the more than 100 students a tough go around and now their education has been interrupted, yet again, because of these incidents.
The director of the school, Joel Vidovic, said they had to put off the start of the summer program by at least a week because of these incidents.
"It kinda got worse each time," he explained. "So at one point, we noticed they had gotten in and broke all the windows on the interior of the building. We cleaned that up and replaced the windows only to have it happen again. So, everyday waking up - what's gonna happen?"
Being the school's director for 11 years, Vidovic has never had to ask that question.
The physical environment wasn't safe for students to be in: there was glass everywhere from broken windows and fire extinguishers were set off.
Tablets and laptops were missing, even the refrigerators and air conditioning units were stolen.
Ironically enough, just a couple of weeks before the first incident happened, Autism Model School received a $94,000 grant from the state of Ohio to up its security measures.
"We immediately started to put plans in place to execute the grant, we just couldn't move fast enough," Vidovic said. "So, we've been in communication with our families to try to make sure they know that wheels are in motion to make sure that our building is safe and secure."
Fighting back tears, Vidovic explained the school is ethical, effective and rooted in a strong passion for helping people. He said what happened is truly relentless.
"These kids deserve better than this. They deserve to have really nice things and to have a really safe, comfortable, warm, happy, fun educational environment."
On a normal day, Vidovic said there are lot of happy people walking the halls, the place is alive, you'll hear kids laughing and see a lot of smiles.
To see the hallways and classrooms destroyed like that was disheartening to say the least.
"You definitely have a phase of shock that turns into anger that turns into sadness," Vidovic said. "I think where we are right now, we're at a point where we're really trying to turn this tragic event into an opportunity for us to feel support from our community, for our students to feel support and to put a positive on it."
As far as who's behind this, we've reached out to police about the investigation and haven't heard back.
There is a GoFundMe set up to help with these expenses.