Theft of Katrina funds stuns school

[Sequoia]

Kids scraped up what they could -- all for naught

The kids who go to Cesar Chavez Academy in East Palo Alto don't have much. Ninety percent of the school's 540 students come from homes where the income is so low that they qualify for a free lunch. But when teachers asked them last month if they'd like to take up a collection for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, that did not hold the students back.

Some dug for pennies found down the side of the family couch. One sold candy bars in her apartment building. Another worked extra chores at home after his mom promised him she'd give him extra money. Their parents pitched in, too, holding a bake sale and donating proceeds to the school-wide relief effort.

School officials estimated that they'd raised $1,500 in loose change and small bills. But somebody else apparently realized it, too, and over the weekend used a crowbar to break into the principal's office and steal several 5-gallon water bottles containing the money.

"We thought it was safe here, but whoever stole it definitely knew what they wanted to get,'' Cammie Harris, the principal of the fourth- to eighth-grade academy for the past three years, said Monday.

Harris was so distraught by the theft that nearly four hours after school began Monday, she still hadn't told students what happened. How would she break it to the sixth-grade girl who'd brought coins every single day since the collection began?

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