The maintenance yard is where old items go — awaiting repairs, a new life in a different school or a place in the dumpster. It is the purgatory of all school items; whether it be textbooks or old desks. Yet a few items aren’t quite the expected. From parking signs to a rabbit that lives under a shed, here are some of the hidden objects in the maintenance yard and the stories that go along with them.

Down the rabbit hole

“He’s just a little guy… a little round fuzzy thing. [When I was driving], I thought I saw something move, and went ‘What was that?’ I looked underneath the pallet and there he was, waiting for me to leave. So I walked away and then he put his head out and looked around. I could see it’s little cottontail.” –Custodian Tom Orsua

Shifting Staircases

“Even if was kind of hard to build, we still have to take it apart because we can’t afford to store everything somewhere. We don’t like to take apart stairs because stairs are really hard to build. Like for our show right now, “Addams Family,” we had to build like 5 staircases; that was probably the worst thing ever. After the closing performance, we stay until one in the morning [otherwise known as ‘strike’] and take everything apart.” -Junior Skyler Barr

Shattered screens  

“They’re big-sized televisions that are just outdated. Everyone wants to go with the flat screens and all that. From personal experience, we threw away a projector television and we were really careful with it getting it outside and putting it on the curb. There was liftgate that they put the television onto and they just [crushed it]. We heard the mirror crack and everything and it was like ‘Oh well, so much for being gingerly with it’ Nobody takes the time to recycle or refurbish it.” –Orsua

Not so smartboard

“When they first got them, [all the teachers] were like ‘ooh high tech’ and ‘Don’t touch them’ and trying to be really careful with all of them. Now you can see that they are just sitting out there getting rained on and will probably just get tossed.” –Orsua

Rescuing the classic

“Those probably came from a classroom. When a teacher leaves, they generally have a whole bunch of stuff that they don’t want to take with them. Over by the C building, one of the teachers was leaving and there was a regular metal garbage can full of videotapes. I went through and pulled out a couple of old movies like 12 O’Clock High, Command Decision and Timothy Leary’s Last Trip. They were classic movies.” –Orsua

Co-written and reported with Ilena Peng

Originally published in the Mar. print issue of El Estoque