Music teacher returns on sour note

By Emily Richmond

Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2003 | 9:39 a.m.

When music teacher Amy Cusack arrived at Dean Allen Elementary School and discovered someone had made off with $1,000 worth of xylophones that had been locked in her classroom over the summer, the theft seemed to be adding insult to injury.

Make that a very wet injury.

Cusack made the trip to Dean on Aug. 22 to prepare her classroom for the start of the new school year, and to boost her own soggy spirits. Just three days earlier her new home at the corner of Gowan Road and Mustang Street was badly damaged in a flash flood. The force of the water was so great, it pushed the gravel of the driveway up and into the side of the house, leaving deep pits. A backyard riding ring Cusack and her husband were building to practice barrel racing and roping was also destroyed.

But Cusack was thrilled to learn there was no water damage at nearby Allen-- including the music room. She was crestfallen later, however, when she realized that instruments had been stolen.

She had locked her classroom at the end of the school year in June, the 16 xylophones disassembled and stacked. Cusack said it didn't hit her at first that instruments were actually missing.

"I thought I was counting wrong," Cusack said. "It just seemed so weird that they would disappear like that. We've had them since we opened the school seven years ago and never had a problem."

One complete xylophone was taken, as well as the metal bars belonging to one set, and the box stand belonging to another instrument of a different size. That leaves the school with 13 working xylophones, instead of 16.

But it also leaves the thief with a mismatch.

There's some poetic justice in that, said Nancy Schkurman, coordinator of the Clark County School District's elementary music programs.

"What they have is unplayable," Schkurman said. "They've taken something that's completely useless. Of course those pieces are still of use to the school if they're returned, which is what we're hoping for."

The xylophones were from a top-of-the-line German manufacturer and won't be easy to replace locally, Schkurman said.

The odds are slim that the school will be able to reclaim the instruments any time soon even if they are found, district officials said. School police said they can't start investigating the theft until Cusack locates the original serial numbers -- details buried in purchasing records seven years old that will have to be searched by hand.

In the meantime, Len Paul, superintendent of the region's northwest region, said he'll dip into his emergency fund to pay for replacements.

"We can buy more xylophones fairly quickly, but that's not the issue," Paul said. "What we need is a better system of monitoring our inventory so that the police can go out and recover the items, and we don't have to spend the money to replace them."

Richard Ennes, business manager for the School District, said summertime property loss is rare -- and instrument thefts are even rarer. The missing xylophones at Allen should be a lesson for the rest of the district's schools, Ennes said.

"If they haven't done so already, I'd tell teachers to take a walk through their rooms and make sure everything of significant value has a label on it that can't be taken off," Ennes said. "That's the only thing that will help us get stuff back once it lands in the pawnshops."