MONTAGUE — A 7-year-old girl left Sheffield Elementary School during recess Thursday, walking into downtown before police found her, Montague Police Lt. Chris Bonnett said.
Police said she had walked downhill into Turners Falls. Gill-Montague Regional School District Superintendent Michael Sullivan said the student left at around 1:15 p.m. and was found by police and a teacher before 2 p.m.
“I can’t recall another time recently that this happened,” Bonnett said. “Certainly is not an issue that is cropping up.”
“Never in my four years here has this happened at Sheffield,” Sullivan agreed.
Bonnett said the roughly half-hour time frame it took to find the girl was relatively quick given where she was in town.
“If a child heads down the hill, she’s going into an area where there’s a lot of people and a lot of streets and a lot of alleys,” Bonnett said.
“The staff handled the incident really well,” Sullivan said. “They did everything they were supposed to in a very kindly and efficient manner, and they worked with the police really well.”
Sullivan said he is unsure of the reason why the student left school, but doesn’t believe the incident is related to bullying.
“We don’t have much information about what her thinking was or what precipitated that,” Sullivan said. “I’ve got no reason to associate this with bullying.”
Sheffield Elementary School Principal Melissa Pitrat, Sullivan said, spent Friday morning reviewing the school’s recess practices to consider what safeguards could be put in place to ensure a similar incident doesn’t happen again.
“There may be some small changes, but that’s not been determined just yet,” he said. “They want to consider the distance from which students can go play from the building.”
Another idea is to possibly remove shrubbery to create clear lines of sight for supervisors.
Sullivan suspects the decisions regarding recess practices should be more concrete the week following school vacation.
You can reach Joshua Solomon at:
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