Bricks through the window, containers going up in flames and bags of weed in the sandbox. The school management of De Linq primary school in Nieuw-Vennep is outraged about the vandalism on and around the school grounds. Director Karin Koets made a declaration of vandalism and graffiti more than twenty times last year.
“Finishing a tax return has become part of my job, but I would rather focus on education,” says Koets. She is regularly confronted with vandalism and then quickly says that she goes into a ‘trade mode’: “Then we clean up everything as quickly as possible, take photos and file a report.”
Still, the damage does not go unnoticed, students of the school often witness the destruction: “Last time I arrived at school and a window was smashed in the nursery downstairs,” says 11-year-old Sami Raji.
According to director Koets, the destruction has a huge impact on the students: “They wonder why it is happening at their school and what can be done about it.”
Camera Surveillance
In order to gain insight into the perpetrators, the school has recently installed cameras, which, according to Ton Wijsman, is a good way to gain insight into the group, which according to him mainly consists of young people: “Groups of youth come here to ‘chill’, but afterwards it turns out that destruction has been done and that is just a shame.”
The parties involved are not surprised that groups of young people gather next to the school. The municipality has created a meeting place for young people next to the school.
‘Hang out’
Karin Koets does not attribute the problem to the immediate environment and the meeting place: “The municipality has built fantastic facilities here, children can skate here, play basketball, play football or simply ‘chill out’, I would never say that they should leave here. But make sure make sure that it remains fun and that we can receive our students ‘just’ the next day.
Haarlemmermeer has been plagued by youth nuisance for some time. Last year, after Amsterdam, the municipality was the region with the most reports of youth nuisance in North Holland. Where 617 reports were made in 2019, last year this increased to 1,653 notifications.