Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kid didn’t wander off he intentionally chose to leave school because he wanted to leave. Schools aren’t jails so when kids want to intentionally leave some kids will. It is really hard for school staff to drop everything and get a kid back to school especially kids who are used to being in charge at home and are never disciplined. Instead of the mom being mad at her kid for leaving school she is suing. It could be the officers were talking amongst themselves saying if they had done that as kids they would have been beaten.

Actually at that age they are basically like jails and that shows lack of supervision.

No schools aren’t jails. A kindergarten can be alone in a room with 20 kids. So one kid walks out does the teacher follow the kid and leave 19 kids alone or stay with 19 kids and report the student missing to office?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see the body cam as you are just getting the parents side who was not there. That kid needs a SN child care setting if they are eloping. There is far more to this story.

A 5 year old taking off—especially if his house is near school—is not so far outside the norm that it suggests “special
needs.” This does raise the question of how he was supervised when he took off, though.

At any rate, needing a special needs child care setting does not mean the cops get to talk about beating you incessantly.

Most regular kids don't leave their child car setting. Even my SN child never did. We don't know what happened and only are hearing one side of it. The camera's in the car, school and body will say what happened.

This IS what the cameras say happened.

Most kids don’t leave their child care setting, but when one does we do not start by assuming the 5 year old is the problem.

ESS parents should be asking a lot of questions about this.

Again, we don't know. The parents are saying it happened in the cameras, but I'd like to see the actual cameras. There is more to this. The child wasn't properly supervised and probably had needs greater than what staff could handle. Kids who are happy don't leave school grounds. Kids who are unhappy, threatened or something else going on leave school grounds.

Either way, it is a huge red flag for this center and this needs a full investigation.

This is not a “center.” It’s a Montgomery County elementary school.

MCPS schools are closed right now. So, this is a child care center operating in a school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see the body cam as you are just getting the parents side who was not there. That kid needs a SN child care setting if they are eloping. There is far more to this story.

A 5 year old taking off—especially if his house is near school—is not so far outside the norm that it suggests “special
needs.” This does raise the question of how he was supervised when he took off, though.

At any rate, needing a special needs child care setting does not mean the cops get to talk about beating you incessantly.

I've seen some situations where a child was constantly running away from class, in some cases teachers had to basically assign one person to stay with the child during the entire school day or they would run away.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see the body cam as you are just getting the parents side who was not there. That kid needs a SN child care setting if they are eloping. There is far more to this story.

A 5 year old taking off—especially if his house is near school—is not so far outside the norm that it suggests “special
needs.” This does raise the question of how he was supervised when he took off, though.

At any rate, needing a special needs child care setting does not mean the cops get to talk about beating you incessantly.

Most regular kids don't leave their child car setting. Even my SN child never did. We don't know what happened and only are hearing one side of it. The camera's in the car, school and body will say what happened.

This IS what the cameras say happened.

Most kids don’t leave their child care setting, but when one does we do not start by assuming the 5 year old is the problem.

ESS parents should be asking a lot of questions about this.

Again, we don't know. The parents are saying it happened in the cameras, but I'd like to see the actual cameras. There is more to this. The child wasn't properly supervised and probably had needs greater than what staff could handle. Kids who are happy don't leave school grounds. Kids who are unhappy, threatened or something else going on leave school grounds.

Either way, it is a huge red flag for this center and this needs a full investigation.

This is not a “center.” It’s a Montgomery County elementary school.

MCPS schools are closed right now. So, this is a child care center operating in a school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see the body cam as you are just getting the parents side who was not there. That kid needs a SN child care setting if they are eloping. There is far more to this story.

A 5 year old taking off—especially if his house is near school—is not so far outside the norm that it suggests “special
needs.” This does raise the question of how he was supervised when he took off, though.

At any rate, needing a special needs child care setting does not mean the cops get to talk about beating you incessantly.

I've seen some situations where a child was constantly running away from class, in some cases teachers had to basically assign one person to stay with the child during the entire school day or they would run away.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see the body cam as you are just getting the parents side who was not there. That kid needs a SN child care setting if they are eloping. There is far more to this story.

A 5 year old taking off—especially if his house is near school—is not so far outside the norm that it suggests “special
needs.” This does raise the question of how he was supervised when he took off, though.

At any rate, needing a special needs child care setting does not mean the cops get to talk about beating you incessantly.

Most regular kids don't leave their child car setting. Even my SN child never did. We don't know what happened and only are hearing one side of it. The camera's in the car, school and body will say what happened.

This IS what the cameras say happened.

Most kids don’t leave their child care setting, but when one does we do not start by assuming the 5 year old is the problem.

ESS parents should be asking a lot of questions about this.

Again, we don't know. The parents are saying it happened in the cameras, but I'd like to see the actual cameras. There is more to this. The child wasn't properly supervised and probably had needs greater than what staff could handle. Kids who are happy don't leave school grounds. Kids who are unhappy, threatened or something else going on leave school grounds.

Either way, it is a huge red flag for this center and this needs a full investigation.

This is not a “center.” It’s a Montgomery County elementary school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Separate from the police I can’t believe people are focusing on the five year old leaving rather than the grown adults not supervising him well enough (this making it possible for all of this to happen.) if this happened with your child snd a babysitter would you be focused on the “misbehavior” or the appalling incompetence of the adult?

By age 5, my kids were playing on unfenced playgrounds, or playgrounds with gaps in fencing (this includes every public school playground in my area) without me watching them every second, with me, with babysitters, and at school. They were never there alone. There was always an adult close enough to hear them if they called for help, but that adult might be monitoring other children. If my kid walked off the playground while I was pushing his toddler sibling in the swing, I would absolutely have considered that "misbehavior".

Public school playgrounds are supervised, at best, with an adult per class. More likely you've got 2 adults with 100 kindergarteners. It's easy to imagine a kid walking off a playground, an adult seeing him, heading towards him, but he's turned a corner before the adult gets to him. That's probably what happened here, given that they noticed, called police, and provided a description that allowed a police officer to find him before the kid got 1/4 mile.

That's not appalling incompetence on the part of adults. If you think that kindergarteners should be in fenced playgrounds, then advocate for that. Or advocate for different staffing ratios. But recognize that with current (non-covid) staff ratios and playground set ups, this can happen.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see the body cam as you are just getting the parents side who was not there. That kid needs a SN child care setting if they are eloping. There is far more to this story.

A 5 year old taking off—especially if his house is near school—is not so far outside the norm that it suggests “special
needs.” This does raise the question of how he was supervised when he took off, though.

At any rate, needing a special needs child care setting does not mean the cops get to talk about beating you incessantly.

Most regular kids don't leave their child car setting. Even my SN child never did. We don't know what happened and only are hearing one side of it. The camera's in the car, school and body will say what happened.

This IS what the cameras say happened.

Most kids don’t leave their child care setting, but when one does we do not start by assuming the 5 year old is the problem.

ESS parents should be asking a lot of questions about this.

Again, we don't know. The parents are saying it happened in the cameras, but I'd like to see the actual cameras. There is more to this. The child wasn't properly supervised and probably had needs greater than what staff could handle. Kids who are happy don't leave school grounds. Kids who are unhappy, threatened or something else going on leave school grounds.

Either way, it is a huge red flag for this center and this needs a full investigation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd like to see the body cam as you are just getting the parents side who was not there. That kid needs a SN child care setting if they are eloping. There is far more to this story.

A 5 year old taking off—especially if his house is near school—is not so far outside the norm that it suggests “special
needs.” This does raise the question of how he was supervised when he took off, though.

At any rate, needing a special needs child care setting does not mean the cops get to talk about beating you incessantly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I find this really confusing. It's hard to know what happened. I am always suspicious when there is just one side, especially when that side is the lawyers representing one person.

One one hand, the kid ran away from school. One of the things that the article objects to seems to be that the police picked up the kid, put him in the car and drove him back to school. To me, that's what I'd expect. The police's first job in that circumstance is definitely to get the kid back to the adults who are caring for him. Yes, being "placed in a squad car" (one of the things they object to) is scary, but I'm not sure how else they should get the child back to school

It sounds like some of the things they said while they were doing it were out of line, but honestly without the other side it's just hard to say.

I don’t understand why they are objecting to this part. The yelling and kid handcuffs are way out of line, but I take it with a grain of salt since they’re making a big deal about being “placed in a squad car”.

At one point they also object to the fact that they used the word "now" when talking to the kid, and that they asked him to sit down in the office.

Our police need way more training in dealing with people who are mentally ill, which almost certainly includes this child. What they're describing isn't OK. The words the officer used aren't OK. But this isn't a million dollar police brutality case. This is an officer with a very out of control child, who said some stupid things, while basically doing his job which was to return the kid to school.

I know there is a lot of resistance to the school resource officer program, but this is the exact type of situation in which you need officers who are specially trained to deal with particular situations. Were these just officers who were on patrol in the area and had to go pick up this kid? I work with law enforcement (not MoCo though) and this is why properly trained school resource officers and truancy officers are essential. Common sense should have dictated that those officers not act like that to a 5 year old, but there needs to be officers specially trained to deal with behavioral issues with kids that can be used in this situation.

Anonymous wrote:Separate from the police I can’t believe people are focusing on the five year old leaving rather than the grown adults not supervising him well enough (this making it possible for all of this to happen.) if this happened with your child snd a babysitter would you be focused on the “misbehavior” or the appalling incompetence of the adult?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kid didn’t wander off he intentionally chose to leave school because he wanted to leave. Schools aren’t jails so when kids want to intentionally leave some kids will. It is really hard for school staff to drop everything and get a kid back to school especially kids who are used to being in charge at home and are never disciplined. Instead of the mom being mad at her kid for leaving school she is suing. It could be the officers were talking amongst themselves saying if they had done that as kids they would have been beaten.

Actually at that age they are basically like jails and that shows lack of supervision.

Anonymous wrote:The kid didn’t wander off he intentionally chose to leave school because he wanted to leave. Schools aren’t jails so when kids want to intentionally leave some kids will. It is really hard for school staff to drop everything and get a kid back to school especially kids who are used to being in charge at home and are never disciplined. Instead of the mom being mad at her kid for leaving school she is suing. It could be the officers were talking amongst themselves saying if they had done that as kids they would have been beaten.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bye bye SROs.

Easy answer.., no police SROs in school... replace them with trained psychologists!

This kid walked out of an ES, there aren’t SROs in ES. These officers were probably just regular patrol officers, the situation would probably have been handled more appropriately if an SRO had responded.