BRIGHTON PARK — On the morning before Valentine's Day, a thief snuck into John C. Burroughs Elementary School.
As neighborhood kids played during the school's open gym hours, someone got into a fourth-grade classroom. Inside sat a cabinet filled with 30 iPads used by Burroughs students.
The thief took every one of them.
On Monday, when fourth-grade teacher Maribel Herrera learned the iPads were missing, she was devastated.
“Life without the iPads is incredibly, incredibly stressful for me and the students,” Herrera said. "You never really know how it feels to lose something until it’s gone."
Herrera had to deliver the terrible news to her classes, which all met her with the same response:
Total silence.
"Nobody said a word," Herrera said.
Then the classroom comedian spoke up: "April fools, right?"
Herrera immediately got onto a computer to start a GoFundMe page to raise $10,000 to buy new ones for the 60 students who used the devices in the classroom.
"The students are asking for their iPads, and we need to replace these learning devices immediately," Herrera wrote. "Our school has no funds due to budget cuts throughout CPS and the state."
As of Tuesday night, 39 people had donated a total of $2,365.
"It's pretty resourceful," said the school's principal, Richard Morris.
If the GoFundMe campaign does not raise enough money to replace the iPads, Morris said, the school will buy Google Chromebooks.
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