Vandals destroyed part of a playground at a Coquitlam elementary school over the long weekend.

The Harbour View Elementary playground was surrounded by yellow police tape Wednesday. The damage was discovered when students returned to school Tuesday morning.

"I was really disappointed that somebody would do that to a kid’s playground," said parent Kelly Krol. Her daughter, six-year-old Gabrielle Krol, is a Grade One student at the school and said she was upset when she saw the damage.

"I saw that the playground was broken,” she said. “I felt really sad and I didn’t know what happened."

"The logs had been broken and split. Part of the structure had been knocked over," said parent Darren Bos.

The damage on the school’s most-used playground was irreparable, so district staff tore apart a large section that had been deemed unsafe.

Parents said the playground is not only used by students during school hours but after school by other kids as well. This same school has been the target of vandals before and the playground’s slide had been burned.

"Around a month ago almost every second window in the school had been broken, so quite a few windows over the whole school, which is a big deal in an era of limited budgets," Bos said.

The school’s budget does not include playground replacement costs so parents are now left to try and fundraise to cover the cost of a rebuild.

With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Michele Brunoro