South Brunswick First Grader Left Behind In Evacuation Drill

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, NJ — A six-year-old first grader in South Brunswick was accidentally left behind while using the bathroom during a school evacuation drill last week — and his mother wants to share his story to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.

Schools across the U.S. are increasingly doing lock-down and emergency evacuation drills, and South Brunswick Township is no different. Last Tuesday, Oct. 15 the students at Deans Elementary School, a kindergarten and first grade school, were filed out of class and taken outside for an emergency evacuation drill.

Except a first grade boy was somehow accidentally left in the bathroom during the drill. His mother estimates he was walking alone in the empty school building for anywhere from two to five minutes.

"I received a phone call that afternoon from his teacher that there had been a situation," said Angela Kriz, the boy's mom. "It's a two-story school and my son said he came out of the bathroom, saw his classroom was empty and walked to the front office. He then walked down to the gym and then to the cafeteria looking for people. He said he kept calling 'Hello, hello?' He said he thought a bad man came to the school and took everybody away. He was really scared and upset, and still upset when he told me about it at home that evening."

It's unclear how the mistake happened. South Brunswick schools superintendent Scott Feder did not respond to multiple attempts for comment from Patch.

But Kriz said the principal at Deans Elementary told her she was new to the school, and failed to inform the teacher in the class next to the bathrooms that she was supposed to check the bathrooms during an evacuation drill.

"It took them several minutes to realize he was missing," said Kriz. "It wasn't until his teacher heard my son yelling 'hello, hello' several minutes later that they found him."

Her son's teacher was also separated from her students during the drill; her job was to leave her class and stand by the front door. Kriz also finds that troubling: "If she had been with her class during the evacuation, she would have noticed one of her 19 students was missing," she said. "Instead they had another teacher with the class, who did not notice my son was not there. I find it odd teachers are separated from their classes during emergency drills."

It was his teacher manning the front door who eventually heard the boy yelling "hello," his mother said.

Kriz also said another detail bothers her: Once they discovered the boy was missing, his teacher and principal also texted each other on their private cell phones.

"So in a real fire or evacuation, teachers and staff are supposed to rely on their private cell phones to communicate? What if they forget to grab their cell phones when they leave?," she said.

She said the school district apologized several times and told her it would never happen again. They also said they would be reviewing their evacuation protocols to look for gaps such as this.

"I don't want any more apologies and I really am not trying to make too big a deal out of this," Kriz said. "I just want to see systems improved. I don't sleep any better knowing the kinks are being worked out at my son's expense."

She said her son told her he thought he was "never going to see Mommy or Daddy again" as he walked the halls alone.

"I just want to bring awareness and I want this to never happen again, in this school or other schools," she said. "There are so many things that went wrong that could have proven disastrous in a real-life situation."