Forget being glued to their seats: Kids at a suburban San Diego County high school couldn't even get through their classroom doors Friday.
With only a day to go before spring break, vandals plugged locks on all the exterior gates and doors on campus with super-strength adhesive.
"A teacher who always gets there early called me on my cell phone and said, 'Guess what?'" said Carlsbad High School Principal Margaret Stanchi. "But I didn't guess this."
Roughly 100 doors were sealed shut sometime before the first staff arrived at about 6:30 a.m. -- a feat that may not have taken very long to pull off, Stanchi said.
"The locks are so small that all they'd have needed to do was put the point of the tube in and squeeze a little," she said. "It doesn't take much to stop you from putting your key in the lock."
Surveillance video taken at the school overnight showed several people milling around the campus, but school officials and police were unable to identify any suspects immediately, police said.
"Someone's going to tell one of their friends sooner or later," said Carlsbad police Lt. Kelly Cain.
Custodial staff quickly unsealed the lock on a building with 27 classrooms, but the rest of the school's 3,000 students were sent to sit in gym bleachers until their classrooms were opened, one by one. Students were shepherded to and fro in a kind of reverse fire drill, Stanchi said.
The grayish glue in most of the locks was pliant enough for staff to remove it with a metal pick, but in some cases they resorted to using a chemical solvent, Stanchi said.