Community rallies around SLO High robotics club that lost everything in fire

We have buckets of gold-and-black bouquets for all of the generous donors helping the San Luis Obispo High School robotics club recover from the alleged arson fire that gutted the school’s computer lab.

While the building was saved, the contents were a total loss. It was especially traumatic for the robotics club, which lost as much as $40,000 worth of robots, parts and equipment that had taken years to assemble. As a result, the team had to miss a competition held in Modesto last weekend.

The response from the community has been tremendous. As of Monday afternoon, more than $25,000 had been raised for the club through GoFundMe — more than three times the original goal of $7,500. Many of the donors are engineers and programmers who got their start at the high school. Several offered notes of thanks to computer science teacher Jan Fetcho.

It would have been far better, of course, if this had never happened in the first place. The fact that authorities suspect three former SLO High students deliberately started the fire to get back at a former teacher makes a bad situation even worse.

Arson fires don’t just destroy property and damage buildings — they undermine the victims’ sense of safety and well-being, as San Luis Obispo High School Principal Leslie O’Connor eloquently pointed out in a newsletter:

“Not only was every computer, textbook, mother board and piece of robotics equipment destroyed, but the sanctuary that this teaching space provided to countless boys and girls who loved to write code, dismantle and rebuild computers, study computer science, build robots or just hang out with their inspirational, loving and caring teacher was also gone,” he wrote.

“The healing process will take time,” he added. “But we will rebuild, regroup and re-energize our students and staff to create another place for our students to feel safe in their coding and computer needs.”

We offer SLO High a big bouquet of tiger lilies as it rebuilds. We don’t doubt for a second that students, teachers and staff will recover from this and be stronger and more determined than ever.

This story was originally published December 12, 2016 at 5:44 PM with the headline "Community rallies around SLO High robotics club that lost everything in fire."