Stranger picks up wrong child from Conn. school

A man mistook another 5-year-old as his own great-grandson, took him to his car and drove him to his house. Now the school is trying to answer questions about child safety.

This screenshot from the web site for Sterling Community School in Sterling, Conn. shows the school sign. The school is the target of criticism after a great-grandparent picked up the wrong child at school, and took them home on Tuesday, February 25.

Parents in a small eastern Connecticut town are demanding action by local officials after a man went to a school to pick up his great-grandson and took the wrong child home, possibly because the boys were wearing similar hats.

The mother of the 5-year-old boy who was wrongly taken, Angela Stone, was among the parents who criticized Sterling school officials during an education board meeting Tuesday night.

Stone said her son was waiting for his bus home at the Sterling Community School on Friday afternoon when the man mistook him for his great-grandson, took him to his car and drove him to his house. School officials haven't identified the man.

Stone said her son noticed the man wasn't driving the correct direction, questioned him during the ride and refused to get out of the car at the man's home.

Stone said she was told that the man's wife noticed the mistake and the couple contacted school officials, who had the man drive the boy back to the school and had a bus take the boy home.

School Superintendent Rena Klebart said the man's great-grandson and Stone's son were wearing similar hats and Stone's son had his hat pulled down low, which may explain the mix-up.

Parents said they had previously raised concerns with school administrators about problems during pickup times.

"We had all expressed that dismissal time was a disaster waiting to happen," Stone said. "And this past Friday that disaster became my family's reality. It infuriates me that it took this incident for administration to make the beginning steps of policy change."

Stone said school officials should have taken the incident more seriously and called police, but didn't. She said she was the one who called state police.

Klebart acknowledged that school staffers made mistakes, including not contacting police immediately. She said school officials are investigating and will take steps to prevent similar mix-ups.

Several people at the school board meeting Tuesday night called for disciplinary action against Klebart and the school principal.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Stranger picks up wrong child from Conn. school
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2014/0226/Stranger-picks-up-wrong-child-from-Conn.-school
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe