By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

WATERBURY, Conn. – It’s been well-established that the adults at Walsh Elementary School are having a difficult time educating their students.

It ranks among Connecticut’s lowest-performing schools.

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Now a pair of recent missing child incidents has some community members questioning if school employees are even capable of keeping track of students and ensuring their safety.

Those concerns led one parent rights advocate to file a complaint against the school with the state’s Department of Children and Family Services.

The troubling questions started a week ago Tuesday, when a 5-year-old student “walked right out the main doors at Walsh Elementary” about 10 minutes after the school day had begun, crossed the street and walked a block and a half to his home, reports NBCConnecticut.com.

The boy’s mother called the school “at the same time (his) teacher noticed he was not in class,” reports WFSB.com.

Three days later, school personnel lost track of a second grader who “managed to sit unnoticed in her sister’s fourth-grade class for 45 minutes,” reports the Republican-American.

An internal investigation revealed that the girl joined her sister’s class after being dismissed from the front office after a discipline issue had been resolved, the paper reveals.

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The district’s official response to the incidents has been mixed.

After news of the 5-year-old’s disappearance from school was first reported, Waterbury schools’ Chief Operating Officer Paul Guidone reassured parents that student safety is the district’s “highest priority.”

But after the second incident, Guidone’s tone changed considerably.

“Schools are large operations with many doors and we’d like to be able to believe that we’re able to watch every child at every moment and that’s just not possible,” Guidone told WFSB.com.

If the school can’t educate children properly or ensure their basic safety, taxpayers should be questioning if the school even deserves to stay open.

Officials have announced that the elementary school made some changes to its morning procedure to ensure students won’t be leaving the building on their own.

But that’s not enough for Connecticut Parents Union President Gwen Samuel, who has formally asked the Department of Children and Family Services to investigate what’s happening at the apparently chaotic school.

Samuel finds the school’s incompetence especially troubling in wake of the recent massacre at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School.

“We had Newtown. We had all these hearings on school safety,” Samuel told WFSB.com.

“This is not supposed to be happening in our schools and we need to do a better job of ensuring our children are safe,” she added.