Blakely Elementary vandalized Sunday

Vandals sprayed offensive graffiti onto nearly every exterior wall of Blakely Elementary School Sunday night.

Staff arrived at the school Monday morning to find black paint marking the outside walls and doors of the main brick building, a nearby portable building and several parking signs. The messages were quickly masked to be kept out of sight of arriving students.

Blakely Principal Ric Jones said the graffiti included obscenities and derogatory language directed at staff members.

"There is some really strange stuff here," Jones said. "There are obscenities and anti-Semitic things. So it's really hard for us to profile this."

Jones believes Blakely students were involved in the vandalism because individual teachers were named. The investigation has been turned over to police and Jones said students and parents should come forward with any information on the vandalism.

"Hopefully (the police department) will be pretty aggressive on this," he said. "And hopefully we'll get the word out into our community that parents need to talk to their kids."

Meanwhile Blakely custodians were tasked with discreetly removing the paint while students were inside classrooms.

Jim Hannon was using a combination of cleaning agents and a pressure washer to erase a particularly large obscenity from an entryway, but the unsealed brick was making it a tricky job.

Chemicals can permanently damage the brick while excessive water pressure can etch the offensive language into the surface.

"You get the paint onto this brick and you'll be lucky to get it off," Hannon said.

Hannon said Blakely had been hit with minor vandalism a few times over the last year.

"This is by far the worst," he said.