Superintendent Addresses Maple Grove Junior High Science Class Incident

Less than a week after a science class demonstration at left four students burned and hospitalized, Superintendent Kate Maguire spoke to the community .

Maguire spoke at the Dec. 6 District 279 School Board meeting during her superintendent’s report. She apologized for the Dec. 1 incident and reported on what is happening at the district level in response to the matter.

Here’s what she shared with the community at the School Board meeting:

I want to begin my report by talking about the incident that occurred at Maple Grove Junior High last Thursday, Dec 1. We’ve been answering questions in response to media inquiries each day and I think that it is important for me to provide information directly to our community members.

Last Thursday morning, a science teacher at Maple Grove Junior High was conducting a demonstration in front of students. The demonstration resulted in a flash fire which was quickly contained; however four students were injured and required medical attention.

This leadership team and our staff members take the safety of our students very seriously. In fact, we take it personally. A safe and healthy learning and work environment is one of the pillars of an effective school system, so when something goes wrong, we acknowledge its significance and take aggressive action to improve.

I’m very sorry that this incident occurred and that students were injured.  I promise you that we are committed to finding out what happened and taking steps to ensure that it won’t happen again.

Our primary concern is for the recovery of our students. All of the students have been released from the hospital; three were released last Thursday and the fourth was released on Saturday.

We also care deeply about the welfare of our teacher who has been placed on an administrative leave of absence pending the outcome of our investigation.

There are actually two investigations under way related to this incident. Because the accident occurred at a school site, the state fire marshal is involved. In addition, the school district is conducting its own investigation. We do not have timelines yet as to when the investigations will conclude.

We have taken swift action already to suspend the use of this particular demonstration until such time as we can complete a curriculum audit of science demonstrations and student experiments. We will evaluate current safety protocol and determine additional measures that may be needed.

I want to reiterate that when accidents happen, we take them personally and have two key priorities:

• Ensuring the health and well-being of our students and staff, and
• Taking action to ensure that it won’t happen again

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