Vandals kicked in a storage shed and spray-painted graffiti all over the "big toy" on the playground at Taylor Road Elementary School last weekend, sending school officials hustling to repair the damage before school starts on Aug. 29.

Principal Darrell Propst said the damage to the big toy was discovered on Friday, Aug. 3.

"Our big toy structure is a multiple climbing and swinging apparatus," he said. "Someone put a lot of spray paint all over it -- graffiti that was mostly curse words, although nothing was derogatory or targeting a certain group of people or a person."

He said Reynoldsburg police officers were checking out the playground over the weekend and called school officials at 8:30 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 5, to report the shed door had been kicked in.

"The storage shed door is broken and it looks like the whole storage shed was rocked, because the contents were scattered all over the floor," Propst said.

He said the school has video cameras, but they are pointed mostly toward building entrances, not toward the playground.

"We don't have an estimation of the damage yet and what it will cost for repairs," he said.

Earlier this spring, the Taylor Road Parent Teacher Organization raised $10,000 for two new basketball goals and landscape improvements for the playground, but that work has not been completed yet, Propst said.

"We expect to have the damage fully repaired by the time school starts," he said.

Propst said he filed a police report and Reynoldsburg police officers said they planned to check with people in the neighborhood near the school to see if anyone saw or heard anything.

"The message we would really like to get out to our community is that they need to be really vigilant in looking around to see what is going on in their neighborhood," Propst said. "This is their school and we appreciate how fantastic our families have been in supporting our school.

"The school playground and school grounds should be closed from dusk to dawn, so we need people in the neighborhood to make sure they let us know if they see anyone hanging around the school during those hours," he said.