Boy walks out of Springfield elementary unnoticed — for hours

Halfway through a music class at a Springfield elementary school, a 10-year-old boy struggling with anxiety asks to go to the bathroom. He walks through the hallways and straight out the front door.

And he keeps on walking — for blocks — with no one at the school realizing he is gone.

Nearly two hours pass before the boy’s mother gets a call — from an unknown number. The boy, on the other end of the line, starts talking but doesn’t make any sense. He is not at school. He is with “strangers.” He wants his mom.

“He said ‘Mommy, where are you?’ I was confused. My heart was racing. I didn’t know what to do,” said Rachael Bickel. “All I could think is ‘I want to hold him.’”

Williams Elementary has tightened security following the Aug. 19 incident by taking a series of steps, such as requiring teachers to do frequent head counts. A Springfield school official, citing the “severity” of the situation, told the News-Leader the district called the state’s Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline to report itself for failing to provide supervision for the boy.

The boy’s mother, recounting what happened that day, believes the increased security and hotline investigation are warranted. She is still frustrated but appreciates that the school is trying to keep such incidents from happening again.

That chilly afternoon, on the phone with her son, Bickel asked to talk to one of the strangers. She learned the couple (whom she described as homeless) grew concerned when they saw her son sitting alone at the McDonald’s restaurant on Kansas Expressway, just south of Interstate 44, so they asked the boy for his mother’s phone number.

Bickel rushed to the restaurant and put her arms around the boy. He appeared OK, suffering only swollen feet and broken eyeglasses. She thanked the couple, offered to buy them dinner, and tried not think about what could have happened if someone else, with different intentions, had found her son.

She believes the boy left the school at 12:45 p.m. and between Williams and the McDonald’s — more than a mile away along busy streets — he stopped at several businesses including a pet store, a library and a hobby shop.

Mobile users, to view map of the places the boy went to after leaving school, click here.

“Once everyone told him how scared he should have been, it really hit him,” she said. “He knows how bad it could have been.”

On the way home, Bickel’s anger set in. She grilled her son about why he left school and then grounded him — indefinitely. She told him there was no excuse for leaving the school and not to do it again.

Hours had passed by then and Bickel was confused about why she hadn’t heard from the school. She called the school, only to learn that none of the teachers knew he had left. And, no one had been looking for the boy.

“I was shocked and flabbergasted,” she said.

Bickel said her son ought to face consequences for his behavior — and so should the school.

Teresa Bledsoe, director of communications, called the situation “concerning” and acknowledged the school was not aware the boy was gone.

“This was a supervision issue. We were not aware this student was off property,” she said. “It’s something the Williams staff has taken very seriously.”

She said schools are equipped with closed-circuit cameras as well as magnetic door locks and intercom buzzers (that ring the front office) to keep unwanted visitors from entering the building. But, external doors — that cannot be opened by outsiders — still open from inside, and changing that could be a fire hazard.

Bledsoe said the school called a staff meeting to talk about ways to improve student safety following the incident. The following changes have been put in place:

•Require students leaving the classroom for any reason, including a bathroom break, to sign out and log what time they left and returned.

•Establish a “buddy system” so anytime a student leaves during the middle of class, he or she will be accompanied by another student.

•Classroom teachers must provide specialty teachers — such as art, music and physical education — with a daily roster of students showing which students are present and absent.

•Teachers must perform a “head count” each time students return to the classroom from recess or a specialty class.

The boy’s parents, Bickel and Scott Carcione, said they were told elementary schools take attendance just once a day, at the beginning of class. They don’t believe that is enough. (In middle and high school, when students switch classes, attendance is taken throughout the day).

“I want some kind of policy in place where these children are accounted for every minute of the day,” said Carcione, who lives in Willard. “If a child goes to the bathroom and he doesn’t come back in five minutes, you check on him.”

The boy’s parents were also concerned that some of the new steps, especially the classroom head counts, weren’t already in place.

“I’m supposed to send my child to this school and feel safe about him being there. I don’t anymore,” Carcione said. “I want something put in place so they know where these kids are. I want to walk in and ask where my child is and they have an answer.”

Bickel said she also believes the apologies she received from school officials were sincere, and she supports the safety steps announced after the incident, adding: “Williams is probably the safest school in Springfield right now.”

A series of meetings between the boy’s parents and school officials also resulted in the boy being given a list of places he can go — inside the school building — if he feels overwhelmed or anxious in the future, she said.

Bickel said she wants the district to take the step of putting the safety changes in writing and to replicate those steps at other elementary schools.

“I understand that people in real-life situations make mistakes, but I want it put in writing that they will do roll call more than once a day,” she said. “I want them to be accountable so this doesn’t happen again.”