"Heartless" vandals have destroyed vital play equipment at Peterborough School.
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The Warilla-based school caters to the needs of students with special needs from Kindergarten to Year 12.
When staff and students arrived at school on Wednesday morning they found the trampoline park had been vandalised.
School principal Sue Corkery said one of the mats had been slashed in a couple of places and there were cigarette burns and butts all over other pieces of equipment.
"The kids were devastated," she said.
"Jumping on the trampoline is a regular occurrence for many of our kids who have autism. They jump on the trampoline and it calms them before they come into class.
"It will be a lost asset while we are waiting for it to be repaired."
Ms Corkery is hopeful the thousands of dollars worth of damage will be covered by insurance but was gobsmacked someone would do such a bad thing.
"It is really disappointing to think someone would do what they did," she said.
'One of the reasons why I reached out [to Mercury] was hopefully whoever did it reads this and feels a bit guilty.
"I know we feel bad and so do the kids. I don't know what they gain from doing such a bad thing."
Ms Corkery added the school, which looks after 100 students from Kiama in the south to Unanderra in the north, relies heavily on donations and fund raising for its playground spaces and equipment.
"All of the money that we get through the government is virtually spent on staffing so our kids can have higher ratio of staff and be safe," she said.
"There are generous organisations out there who help us purchase other vital equipment. For someone to come out and destroy this equipment is sad."
Nancy Urban, who works at the school, took to social media to express her anger.
"Our kids don't have access to a big playground, so having these spaces is special and cool....for someone to walk in or jump the fence and slash our trampoline.....it makes me so angry."