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Highlands Today

Safer School Dismissal At Park Elementary Is Reassuring

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Highlands Today staff

Published: December 27, 2007

Schools are custodians of our children, so any precaution they take to keep our kids safe is a welcome gesture.

Take for example new dismissal procedures at Park Elementary School. Starting next year, parents or guardians who pick up the school's students are required to have a card in the dashboard that has the names of the children they will be picking up.

There was no incident that prompted that change. Just good-old-fashioned proactive measures.

"We just want to make sure that the children are as safe as we can possibly have them be," Park Elementary Principal Brenda Longshore told Highlands Today.

Parents or guardians who don't have the card on the dashboard will be asked to park and come to the front office to provide identification before getting their child. Those who walk to the school will be asked to carry the card with them.

What this means is that the school needs parents' cooperation for this to go off smoothly. Some parents who don't use the dashboard cards might get irritated if they are asked to step out of their cars even though they are the ones who drop off the children and school dismissal staff knows who they are.

We hope parents understand this is nothing personal. Just a way to strengthen school safety.
What it will also do is to alleviate those long lines of vehicles waiting to pick up the students, as parents and guardians make sure they are the ones usually picking up the children.

Cracker Trail Elementary, which issued windshield cards for parents about four years ago, said it got a handle on parent pick-up varying between different relatives, once the windshield stickers came into effect. Now, the same person usually picks up the children, the school's principal said.

Until the Columbine massacre years ago, our country's schools were very porous. Sometimes it takes a tragedy of this magnitude to bring in some needed security measures. Over the years Highlands County schools have beefed up school security, and we hope they continue doing so.

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