Whoever flooded Gov. Thomas Johnson High School in December may have thought the prank was funny, but officials are not laughing at the $15,600 in damages it caused.

The Frederick Police Department said vandals broke into the school during winter break, spray-painted graffiti, stole school property and broke a waterline, flooding a section of the school's west wing, near the band and industrial arts classrooms.

About a month later, school system officials estimate that the incident ended up costing thousands of dollars, dozens of hours of labor for school system custodians and maintenance staff, as well as additional alarm and safety checkups needed to secure the school.

Hal Keller, the school system's fiscal services director, said in an e-mail that the school system's insurance policy should pay for most of the damage. The policy has a $5,000 deductible, he wrote.

"This particular incident is not significant and of itself would not have a significant impact on subsequent premiums," Keller wrote. "The deductible amount is paid from a budget account in fixed charges."

The full cost includes the price of cleaning up after the flooding and replacing items that were damaged in the incident, said school system spokeswoman Marita Loose. The flooding damaged a number of air conditioner filters, which were stored in bulk in the school's penthouse, next to the broken pipe.

Replacing the filters alone cost almost $8,000, Loose said. The school system also paid $2,000 for two Dell desktop computers, and more than $2,500 to cleanup and repair the school after the incident.

Cleanup costs included repairing floors, locks and doors and the salaries for custodians and maintenance staff, who worked for 32 hours to dry out floors and hallways.

School custodians were the first to notice the incident when they checked on the school at 5 a.m., Dec. 29.

Together with maintenance workers they worked until noon drying floors and running dehumidifiers, and managed to prevent further damage inside the building.

Following the incident, the school system also had to test the alarms and security systems at the school, said Clifton Cornwell III, coordinator for schools' security. According to reports from police and school officials, vandals entered through the roof without setting off any of the alarms at the school.

Cornwell wouldn't discuss in detail because of safety concerns, but he said the building is secure.

"We constantly review and improve the alarms systems at all of our buildings," he said. "… The room that was entered over the roof … was a mechanical storage area with no access to the interior of the building."

Sgt. Jason Keckler of the Frederick Police Department said the investigation of the incident is still open.

"We have had no new leads," he said.

Earlier this month police reviewed security tapes from the school and announced they are looking for at least two suspects who appeared in the video. They have not yet been able to identify the people in the video, partly because the quality of the video, the bad weather conditions at the time of the incident and the fact that the break-in happened at night, Keckler said.

Anyone with information about the incident should contact Detective Garcia with the Frederick Police Criminal Investigation division at 301-600-1247.

E-mail Margarita Raycheva at mraycheva@gazette.net.