PS8 Red-Faced After Two Students Go Missing

By on May 19, 2010 11:37 pm in News, schools

There’s a happy ending, as the two six-year-olds were found after school personnel noticed their absence Tuesday afternoon. According to this NBC New York article, the boy and girl were found “about a block and a half away from the school…standing in the pouring rain…some 25 minutes later.” However, the article quotes a school spokesperson as saying “the students were not even a block away from the campus when they were located.”

Today, according to the article, Principal Seth Phillips “met with the [students’] parents, offering an apology and promising to investigate.” He also promised this sort of thing wouldn’t happen again.

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  • ilikebrooklyn

    This school has been lax in the safety department more than this single event. I saw the mother after the event and having raised 3 children myself understand how traumatizing this event was for the parent.

    Thank Gd the children were ok.

  • thatguy

    Agreed, I hope this matter is thoroughly investigated.

    On a highly tangential note, can someone explain the rationale for not writing out the word “god?” It’s possible that it was a typo in the above post, but I’ve definitely seen it written that way before and have never really understood it. As far as I’m aware, god is a synonym for the word “deity’ that also happens to refer to the “one true” monotheistic God of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

    That god’s name is (traditionally) Yahweh. If it’s supposed to be a reverence thing, leaving out a letter in the word doesn’t seem to make much sense, because it’s just that — a word, not a proper name, like Yahweh, Vishnu, Zeus, etc.

    So would anyone care to…enlighten me?

  • The where

    That guy stfu

  • John

    I’m not surprised,but glad no harm came to those children.
    when I picked up my daughter on Monday it was chaos as always.
    teachers not coming out to dismiss students because of rain.
    also during lunch the gates are open for anyone to enter or exit.
    this school is very lax on safety to say the less !

  • Monty

    @thatguy, I was raised Jewish and I never understood that either. God is a title, not a name. Part of the reason I’m not Jewish any more.

  • WillowtownCop

    I’m glad I’m an atheist and don’t have to waste precious brain cells on crap that doesn’t matter or exist.

  • David on Middagh

    “They’re six years old,” said Celano. “It shouldn’t happen with a fifth grader — let alone a six year old.”

    This neighborhood in this city is pretty darn safe. I’m pretty sure a fifth grader (10-year-old) could stand to wander a block from school.

  • nabeguy

    As this happened to be at dismissal time, the real question is, who was supposed to pick these kids up?

  • Anon

    Gd or G-d is sometimes used (most often by Jews) because of their interpretation of Deu 12:3-4. In that passage God commands that other gods have their idols destroyed and names erased and that it not be done to God. By not writing out the name of God, it cannot be erased (or so the thinking goes).

  • th-tg-y
  • nabeguy

    How did a story about missing kids morph into a theological discussion of missing letters? Sheesh.

  • John

    I agree Nabeguy about the religious BS ,but why did you put the onus on the parent and not the school? If they were six were talking Kindergarten or first grade? if they were in Kindergarten they are released at the classroom door. so how does two kids roam out and wander? I think PS 8 dropped the ball in a big way !

  • PS 8 parent

    I would be putting some of the onus on the child. Six-year-olds are old enough to know what is expected of them. I’m not saying the school doesn’t have a responsibility to keep its children safe, just that if I were a parent of one of those children, I’d be concerned about my kid’s behavior.

    That said, the school has taken responsibility; from Seth’s backpack letter: “We hold ourselves to a high standard, and any mistake is unacceptable because we are talking about children. Please rest assured that we are reflecting upon what happened and we will institute any changes necessary to avoid this kind of problem in the future.”

  • nabeguy

    I’m not letting the school off the hook, John, espeically given that a similar incident happened to me there. Fortunately, it was due to a simple mix-up and my daughter was safe at home. With alll the construuction being done to the school, and the loss of the school yard as a dismissal point, things do tend to get a bit hectic at 3:00 o’clock so, while not necessarily excusable, it’s also not difficult to understand how this happened.

  • bklyn20

    While I don’t have all the details of this particular incident, please do keep in mind that due to fire hazard rules, the school cannot lock children into classrooms or into the school itself. (They can lock the doors from the outside, but need pushbars and the like on the inside.)

    Pickup has become especially hectic because the school population has grown too large for a different set-up, and the schoolyard has temporarily gotten much smaller due to the construction.

    Ironically, the fantastic PS 8 community is part of this pick-up problem — we all stay on the sidewalk talking to each other when it might be better to move across the street or down the block so teachers, arriving parents and students not yet picked up could keep better track of one another. (Yes, I am also among guilty from time to time.)

  • nabeguy

    It should also be pointed out that many students at PS 8 attend after-school programs such as the Y and Kids Orbit (both of which are great assets for working parents) so are not picked up directly at their classrooms by parents. It could very well be that these two children wandered off on their own during the transition.The fact that it was the school who contacted the parent, and not some frantic spouse or nanny, seems to point towards that scenario.