District Changes Policies After 5-Year-Old Goes Missing
VANCOUVER, Wash.— Schools in Vancouver are revising their student absentee notice policies after a 5-year-old mistakenly attended a first grade class. He was marked absent from his kindergarten class, but his mother was not notified.
The mix-up, which occurred Sept. 13, prompted a lockdown and 90-minute scramble to locate Braiden Gonzalez. He was only discovered in a first grade classroom after a photo of him was distributed to all of the teachers.
Gonzalez’s mother was not notified of this due to the school district policy, which did not make calls to parents about missing students during the first week of school. The first week of school is normally chaotic due to classroom and school changes, and late registrations, according to the Columbian.
Now, however, all schools will place automatic calls regarding absent students by mid morning.
The district will also take digital photos of all of the students at the beginning of the school year rather than next month. If school officials had been in possesion of a photo of Gonzalez, they speculate that the time to locate him would have been less.
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