Vandals rip up school garden built by Steph and Ayesha Curry's foundation

OAKLAND — A garden built by Steph and Ayesha Curry’s foundation was found vandalized and in complete disarray on Monday, a little more than a year after it had been refurbished as part of a sprawling playground revitalization project, the Oakland Unified School District said.

Sometime over the weekend, the vandals tore apart planters, broke wooden benches, shattered a ladder and ripped out hoses that were used for an irrigation system at Global Family Elementary School on 40th Avenue in East Oakland. A school staff member discovered the damage Monday, leaving the school’s principal with a simple question: “Why would something like this happen?”

“It’s a little disheartening,” said Principal Juan Vaca, who added that it was “an opportunity for us to connect and come together.”

The garden was revitalized during the winter of the 2022-23 school year with the aid of KABOOM! and the Currys’ Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation. With a few other partners, they helped fund the installation of eight new gardening beds and several wooden benches for children to sit and enjoy the numerous flowering trees and plants bursting in shades of red and orange.

It was part of a larger renovation project that also included the creation of a new, colorful playground and sports court. The goal was to make the garden more of a “welcoming” space for children to learn where they get their food, Vaca said. To that end, the school partnered with the nonprofit FoodCorps to garden fresh tomatoes, strawberries, peas and other vegetables.

“They get to get their hands dirty in a really constructive way, and see how food is grown and how the food can go to the table,” said John Sasaki, an Oakland Unified School District spokesman. “So this is a really, really important part of the school community.”

On Tuesday, the garden sat in shambles. Concrete bricks forming a wall near the garden’s entrance lay shattered on the ground. Wheelbarrows were overturned, a hay bail was torn apart and plants lay on their sides throughout the garden in broken pots.

The vandals completely ripped out the plastic piping supplying water to one gardening bed, while either ripping or cutting up piping in multiple other beds. Shards of wooden benches were strewn on the ground. A wooden sign declaring “Your mind is a garden” lay in two pieces beside a tree.

All of the destruction was caught on security cameras. On Tuesday, school and district officials vowed to fix the damage and have the garden ready for children when the next school year begins. They had no estimate for how much the repairs might cost.

“When you see something like this, it just shows us there are people who have these ideas, who think destroying is better than building,” Sasaki said. “And so we want people to know there is a better choice — if you’re someone who thinks it would be funny or fun to go out and do something like this, in Oakland or somewhere else, we want you to make a better choice.”

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Vandals rip up school garden built by Steph and Ayesha Curry’s foundation

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