Danbury elementary school strengthens safety measures
DANBURY — City school officials are determined to make sure a young student doesn’t walk out of school early, unattended and unnoticed ever again.
District and school administrators reviewed safety procedures after receiving a complaint from the mother of a South Street School kindergartener two weeks ago.
The mother, Allison Solis, said her son’s grandmother spotted the 5-yearold riding his bike as she walked to South Street School to pick him up around 3 p.m. May 9.
Dismissal time at the school is 3:30 p.m.
Superintendent Sal Pascarella said the school had “wonderful procedure structures” — but attention needed to be paid to certain aspects.
“Even though [the school] had a structure that was set to work, there were some holes in it that we had to shore up,” he said. “We reviewed those procedures and reinforced them.”
The district’s strengthened procedures will be sent to all K-5 staff in the district so they can review them and “look at the nuances that caused the situation over at South Street with the youngster being able to leave campus,” Pascarella said.
According to a newsletter sent to district residents, a new security system called Raptor was implemented at the school beginning Monday. Under the system, all visitors must present proper identification to a security guard at the front desk.
The guard will print a visitor badge for every guest that is to be worn at all times, and guests must check in upon arrival and check out before leaving the school.
“It’s very hard to explain all the nuances, but there are walkers, riders and pick-ups — and the youngsters are assigned to rooms [for dismissal],” Pascarella said. “When students go from one room to the other there needs to be closer supervision … that when a youngster goes to the room they’re supposed to go to, someone sees that they actually got into the room.”
Administrators told Solis that two school staff meetings about “the importance of complying with security policy and being ‘stationed’ accordingly” had taken place since the incident, Solis said.
In the case of Solis’s son, Pascarella said, the boy went unaccounted for.
“When asked where he was, one of the other youngsters said he went to the office. Well, he didn’t go to the office,” Pascarella said. “He was so excited to get on his new bike, apparently, that he went out to his bike.”
Solis said her son is usually driven to and from school, but that day he rode his bike to school, accompanied by an adult.
“There needed to be better eyes on the accountability piece — checking why the youngster wasn’t in the room, following up and making sure he got to [where he was supposed to be],” Pascarella said. “It shouldn’t have happened.”
Solis said South Street School Principal Carmen Vargas-Guevara “indicated that staff and the safety adviser will now be stationed properly with ample time during arrival and dismissal time.”
Solis said Vargas-Guevara also told her that a robocall would be sent out to remind families of the dismissal plan, along with a newsletter about the drop-off and pick-up procedures.
After receiving the most recent newsletter, Solis said it made her feel as if her “uproar was not in vain.”
“Knowing that a security guard will be at the entrance of my son’s school definitely takes a lot of the anxiety off of my shoulders,” she said.
“With the many tragic school events occurring, this new security system is a step in the right direction to providing our kids the protection and safety that they deserve,” Solis said.