How do you assure the safety of 331 children?

Yesterday, a Grade 2 girl was sexually assaulted in the bathroom of her downtown school. (For those of you outside of North America, that would make her 7, possibly 8.)

It is believed that a man entered the school while the doors were briefly left open during recess, hid in a bathroom and assaulted the girl when she went, alone, to the washroom.

This has made national news, which is somewhat unusual. The same thing happened in a Toronto school in 2002 and now there is a province wide initative in Ontario to provide funding funding for all schools that want extra security. I do not know that this would happen in Alberta.

Today I received a letter home from Taylor's school, but not Liam's, in regard to this matter and how the Catholic School Board will be handling it. Will that be different than the Public board, which is what the school involved is? I very much doubt it.

Last year our school brought in a policy where all doors except for the front door are locked. This pissed off many parents who questioned how little kids would make it to the front door if they needed the bathroom. The doors were then left open during recess and lunch, which appears to be exactly what the school in question was doing.

So how do you guarantee safety for over 300 children? The reason they started locking doors last year was because there was an elderly man on the school fields approaching students, my son included. A few parents demanded fences around the perimeter of the field, with locked gates. This was an impossiblity as the majority of our grounds actually belong to the city and with soccer posts and baseballs diamonds, you can not deny the community access. As a parent, I was opposed to the idea of chain link fences. I felt more supervision was the way to go, it does seem to lack at times but I suppose teachers are entitled to breaks!

The letter that was sent home today states that "in response to this incident, all doors at our school, including the front door, will remain locked during the day until further notice." It goes on to say that we will be informed of any new details or additional security measures.

I am glad they sent the letter home so quickly, their response last year was slow at best. I am sad though to see that we live in a world where a school can not have an open door policy.