An Ervinton Elementary School student was missing for several hours Monday after she left school and ran into the woods, Dickenson County School Superintendent Haydee Robinson confirmed Friday.
The incident has led to meetings of worried parents who want answers – and reassurance that something similar won’t happen again.
The girl’s father, J.R. Robinson, is president of the parent teacher organization at Ervinton. He said his daughter had never done anything like that before; she later told him that she had been bullied at school and wanted to leave.
“She told us when [she was found] that she was trying to go home,” he said of the 13-year-old, a seventh-grader at the school. “Of course, she ran the wrong way.”
Around 9:30 a.m. Monday, the girl left class to go to the nurse’s office, said her father, who is not related by blood to the superintendent.
Security video caught her hopping a fence and heading into the woods, but school officials didn’t know she was missing until around 1 p.m., when her teacher talked with the nurse and realized she hadn’t been sent home sick.
The search began with the help of law enforcement, and both parents were called; the girl was found in the late afternoon by two teachers who were on their way home, spotted her walking along the road and took her back to school.
“When she was found, she was soaking wet and mud head to toe,” said her father. “She said she had fell asleep in the woods, and that’s another scary thought because there’s black bears around that area and God knows how many coyotes and who knows what else in those woods.”
He rattled off another list of other dangers: cliffs and highwalls, old abandoned mineworks, kidnappers.
“With the sigh of relief, that’s when I got to thinking,” he said. “What if it had been a smaller child?”
Haydee Robinson, the superintendent, said the school took immediate action to implement new policies for keeping track of students – and other schools in the county are reviewing their policies as well.
Now, she said, a procedure has been added to make sure a child’s whereabouts are known when he or she goes somewhere like the nurse’s office. If a child stays in the nurse’s office for awhile, the nurse is to call the classroom, Haydee Robinson said. If the child is being checked out by a parent, someone in the office is to call the classroom.
For the teacher, the rule of thumb is 10 minutes, she said. If the teacher doesn’t hear anything after 10 minutes, the teacher is supposed to call the office.
The use of sign-out sheets and hall passes is also to be more strictly enforced, the superintendent said.
“This is just one of a school’s nightmares,” she said. “We saw that there as a concern with the safety issue. That has been addressed.”
dmccown@bristolnews.com
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