A Buffalo school principal under fire for suspending a 5-year old who walked out of school has been placed on paid administrative leave.
School board member Carl Paladino confirmed for WBFO News on Wednesday that Public School 82 principal, Denise Segars-McPhatter is now on leave.
Last week, a kindergarten student managed to leave the building unnoticed. Earlier this week, the boy's father Hector Ortiz told reporters the school told them there was no policy in place for such an incident.
"My concern is why did this happen, before they say they're trying to prevent it in the future. It's irrelevant for me to hear what they're going to do in the future, if I don't have any answers of what happened now. they could probably have a plan for the future, but I want to know what happened now," said Ortiz.
Paladino confirmed that the District does have a policy in place for a child leaving a school building. A probe is now underway to find what may be systemic problems.
Schools Superintendent Donald Ogilvie says Segars-McPhatter didn't notify the district's downtown office when the 5-year-old vanished from his special ed class and was found a few minutes later by a police officer. He spotted the child wandering down the street and discovered he had walked away from school.
The officer returned the student and parents were called and told the child would be suspended for leaving his class. School officials found out about the incident when it showed up on the front page of The Buffalo News.
Ogilvie says the school should have followed the established protocols.
"A situation, an unfortunate situation like this, in most cases, can be avoided. But in those rare instances where something unimaginable happens, we need to do a much better job of communicating our protocols," Ogilvie said at Wednesday night's school board meeting
District Parent Coordinating Council President Sam Radford says teachers and administrators are not aware of the protocols. He says there have been other incidents of missing children which weren't reported to the school system, citing a case in 2012 when a student wound up in a FedEx truck which drove away from Harvey Austin School and parents weren't told what happened and still aren't sure.
