Mom sues city and principal for sending son, 4, home alone

[my2sense]

A Queens mom says a principal should pay for letting her kindergartner walk home alone from school last year.

Michelle Baylor is suing the city and Principal Anne Cohen for dismissing son Jaylen Bookman from Public School 147 without checking to see if someone was around to pick him up.

Jaylen, then 4 years old, walked two blocks to his Cambria Heights home, where his grandfather spotted him standing outside.

"He got upset because he saw that I was upset," Baylor said. "It was really a frightening experience."

Baylor, 41, says she arrived at the school around 2:15 p.m. on Oct. 9, 2009, to find Jaylen wasn't there. She searched the school with an assistant principal.

"I asked her where he was, and she started to look panicked," Baylor said.

About 15 minutes later, she got a call from home saying Jaylen was there.

The next day, Baylor confronted Cohen and says she was told there aren't enough teachers to monitor dismissal.

"She started talking to me about budget cuts, and I just wasn't interested in hearing that," Baylor said.

Baylor's lawyer, James Ray, says the city Department of Education and officials at the Cambria Heights school were negligent. A lawsuit filed in Queens Supreme Court asks for unspecified damages.

School officials declined to comment on the pending litigation.


Source:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/03/23/2010-03-23_qns_mom_sues_city__principal_for_sending_son_4_home_alone.html#ixzz0izi2Kbtu

[my2sense]

1. I wonder how many other similar scenarios are

playing out around the country in our schools, endangering our children because of budget cuts? ::shakes head::

[kestrel91316]

2. Why wasn't the principal arrested on charges of child abuse/endangerment???

[RKP5637]

3. It certainly sounds negligent to me, in fact, a definite lack of smarts... I feel so

sorry for parents today. Schools are often crappy and dangerous, you can't by default trust people, kids are exposed to drugs, hostile TV shows, etc., etc. It just seems extremely difficult to me today for many parents to try to hold everything together, and then on top of that get let down by the school as it appears in this case.

[Warpy]

4. "letting" and "sending" are two different things

Telling a four year old child everybody's busy, walk home alone is negligence and child endangerment.

Having a child get tired of waiting and walk away when overworked and overwhelmed school staff are looking the other way is not. It's regrettable, but that's what budget cuts do.

I'm sorry, but it doesn't sound like she's got a case. It sounds like she needs to talk to her kid about staying in the building until someone picks him up.

FWIW, it was 5 blocks to the bus stop for one kindergarten I was in and I walked it with other neighborhood kids.

[ManiacJoe]

7. Exactly. Very misleading title on the article.

[tammywammy]

8. +1 n/t

[riderinthestorm]

9. +1. FWIW, I also walked to kindergarten alone as did pretty much every other kid who could. nt

[EFerrari]

19. No four year old should be left to decide to walk anywhere. Sorry.

She sure does have a case.

[Warpy]

20. Read my post again and try to understand it.

I know it's really really hard, but you can do it if you think about it.

Cost cutting has meant fewer and fewer teachers and teacher aides to keep an eye on the kids. They are overwhelmed. That kid wandered off. They didn't send him off. Big, big difference.

There is no damage done. There is no case. She's not going to win the legal lottery over this one.

[EFerrari]

21. I don't need to read your post again. And I sure don't need the ugly, thanks!

[LWolf]

5. How does Jaylen usually get home?

What was different about the usual routine?

Did someone TEll that child to walk home, or did he leave a designated pick-up area because his mother was late? Was anybody on duty at that pick-up area? Does the school have a protocol for students whose parents are late?

That would have been caught by the schools I've worked in.

[waiting for hope]

6. The article stated that the mother went to the

school to pick him up - that he was a car rider is implicated.

[LWolf]

17. I'd ask these questions, then:

Is there a place that "parent pick-up" students go to wait for their rides, and a person on duty there? Did that person on duty not see Jaylen leave? If one person is "on duty" for a few hundred kids, that could happen.

Is there a fence and gate in that area so that the person on duty sees the parent and sends the child through? (This is how it has worked at every school I've ever worked at.)


What is the protocol for students who have not been picked up by the time the "duty" person is off duty? Again, in every school I've ever worked at, that would be to escort them to the office, where phone calls would be made.

Did Jaylen tell anyone he was leaving, or just take off, or?

[waiting for hope]

18. I don't know that schools policy and I am by no means

defending the school but I can give you my experiences with my 3rd grader - they get out at 2:30, I arrive usually around 2:00 to 2:15 to pick him up, the kindergarten classes are the first out, with a teacher and then the upper grades are dismissed. There are usually about 4-5 teachers outside with the kids. The cars move forward picking their kids and if the child was sent home prior to the school being dismissed, would they have known he wasn't there? The article states that the principal admitted that there were not enough teachers to monitor dismissals. Like I said, I am not defending the school, and who knows if the child acted on his own or if he was told to go home (already the principal sounds unprofessional in that she was discussing budget cuts instead of addressing the situation ..) but as a mother myself, it would have scared the crap out of me if I arrived at school to pick up my child and he wasn't there.

[LWolf]

22. At least the administrator

admitted not having enough people on duty, and didn't try to pass the buck.

I'm not attacking nor defending the school; just looking for the information that should be considered before forming an opinion. ;)

[waiting for hope]

23. Understood and am saddened by the

state of affairs .. my county here in NC has a 13.2 million dollar budget gap, and is looking to cut 37% of the public schools budget. My son goes to a really good public school here, I would hate to see this being used as a justification to bring in more charters. Gov. Bev Perdue is drooling over the race to the top money and I see nothing positive from it.

[LWolf]

25. I see nothing positive from it, either.

We cut drastically last year, and are hoping to hold the line this year without MORE cuts.

Last year, my small district lost 53 teachers and adopted a 4-day school week; our kids now get only 147 days in the school year. Those of us whose jobs weren't cut took an increase in hours and a cut in pay.

[Raineyb]

26. He lives two blocks from the school. I doubt that she usually drives

two lousy blocks; especially given how bad parking can be

[angstlessk]

10. Heck when I was 4 years old, I caught a city bus and the driver

when he reached his turn around point...turned to me and said, "little girl, you need to get off here" I walked the neighborhood crying, and luckily for me another 'little girl' was home sick, jumping rope (or playing hop scotch...dim memory) in the front of her house...(my mother would NEVER let me play if I was home sick)..anyway...her mom called the police and all I knew about me and my parents was, "my name is Kitty Boo and my daddy owns a cleaners"..they located the cleaners, and my mom did not even know I was missing...

No Child Protective Services, no law suits against the bus company,...just me running like hell back home so my mom did not spank the heck out of my fanny! The cop told my mom..."don't spank her..she was scared enough....she REFUSED an ice cream cone"!

[Nikki Stone1]

11. Oh goodie. Another teacher-bashing article from cousin Rupert.

Fuck this shit.

[LeftyMom]

12. Two blocks? And nothing happened? Yeah, she should totally sue.

I expected to open the story and find out that he was mauled by bears, adopted by Joe Jackson and lost three toes to frostbite. Because surely nobody would sue over a five year old having an uneventful walk home, so surely something tragic must have happened for his mother to sue.

:facepalm:

[renate]

24. ..."adopted by Joe Jackson"...

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

[Matariki]

13. When I was a kid everyone walked to school alone

kindergarten included. I walked further than 2 blocks if I recall. Even had to turn a corner. All by myself.

[Berry Cool]

14. I think you're all overlooking a possibility here.

There could have been "noncustodial parent issues" at work here. Note the mother and the child don't have the same surname. That could be for any number of reasons, but one of them might be that his parents are no longer married. If so, his mother may have panicked that his father picked him up from school without her permission. She was obviously relieved when that turned out not to be the case, but part of the relief may have been that he didn't go home with Dad. Maybe she didn't wish to mention this to the media.

I know when my mother was an elementary-school secretary, she had a list of who was permitted to pick up each child in that school from the building in the case of those who didn't ride the bus, and unless a child had a signed permission note indicating otherwise for the day, that child didn't go home with anyone else and didn't ride a different bus home, either. Part of the reason for this was so that the school could avoid being sued by a custodial parent for allowing a noncustodial parent to pick up the child and kidnap him or her. If the proper adult failed to pick up the child, the school called the parent or guardian until someone did.

True, she worked for a small school in a small town. But that's what they did. Oh, and the teachers were not considered responsible for making sure this got done; the principal's office was. Kids whose ride failed to show knew they were to report to the office and the people there would help get them home. The teachers might generally herd kids toward the right bus or make sure in general that there were no spare kids standing around at the end of the day, but they were not responsible to make sure that every kid got home safely.

Anyway, I could be wrong, but that's just one reason why it's no longer the good old days when we all used to walk to and from school all by ourselves in perfect safety, in blinding snowstorms, uphill both ways and nothing bad ever happened to us. It just isn't. Schools are expected to know where the kids are to go at day's end and help make sure they get there some way other than pointing them at the street, unless there are explicit instructions that it's OK to let them go home on their own.

[closeupready]

15. Totally support her. No excuse for this at all.

:mad:

[TexasObserver]

16. Recommend