‘Something not right;’ what would you have done?

Posted on October 2, 2007 in Personal thoughts, Schools & Education by DM

Have you ever dropped your kids off at school and noticed someone hovering around the area, or perhaps even entering the building, who just looked out of place? That’s just what happened to us this morning - my husband dropped our daughter off at her middle school and when he came home, he described having seen a man walking into the school who for a variety of reasons (age, clothing, odd behavior, “not a teacher” according to our daughter) just did not look like he belonged there. I decided to call the school to make sure everything was okay. When the person in the office told me she agreed with me that the guy looked out of place and that they were waiting to learn why he was there, I called the police non-emergency number and asked them to send an officer to the school in case the office staff needed help. Of course, later when I called the school again, the woman told me it was all taken care of, that it had been “a student matter.” I thanked her and hung up, and then spent a few minutes thinking about whether I’d done the right thing.

In this case, everything worked out fine. The individual was apparently a student’s family member, with legitimate business in the school. But I didn’t know until I called that the guy had even gone into the office. All I knew was that he had entered the school, but was not a teacher and too old to be a student. Suppose that he had entered the school but had not gone to the office, as visitors are supposed to do? Wouldn’t the school like to know that someone was roaming the hallways unescorted?

I think that sometimes, our decision not to act is based on the fear of looking silly or being accused of over-reacting. I really don’t care whether I did over-react, or whether I did look silly. I would have felt far worse if I’d found out that people in the building were threatened or harmed, and that we had failed to act.

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