Mom Called to School, Arrested for Trespassing School Property

Voluntary or involuntary aside, the part that bothers me is that the mom was arrested for trespassing. I don't know any more than the rest of y'all, but obviously, the situation wasn't well handled by anyone if the police have been called. I don't understand why it had to get to that level. Particularly since the mother had been called to the school to help with her son. There just has to be some information missing, because I cannot for the life of me understand why they would go so far to arrest her for failing to sign the book in the absence of other factors. It'd be a simple thing to just have her come to the office and sign the dratted thing. Maybe it's the layout, or whatever, but when I'm called to the school for my son (it's been awhile, but he's autistic and has had some bad days when I needed to come pick him up), I get buzzed in (new this year after Newtown ), and the office is right off the front door. Even if I were to forget to sign the book -- and I have, haha -- they just say , "Hey, Mrs. P, can you sign the book for me?" And I say, "Oops, absolutely", scrawl my John Hancock, and ta-da, we're done.

I don't get it.

The mom was wrong not to stop and sign in. If her school is anything like ours, the act of signing in takes all of 30 seconds, assuming she's been there before.

The fact that they buzzed her in does not automatically mean they have accepted her as an allowed visitor. Schools aren't airports. They aren't designed with security choke points. You get buzzed in the front door by a person who might have a camera to give you a cursory look, but then you have to walk to the main office or security office. In our schools, the first time you come in to visit, it's a bit of a wait, because they scan your ID, but after that, you just give your name and they print up a temporary ID in a few seconds.

If her son's issues were not at a point that warranted calling 911, then her precious little snowflake wasn't in such dire need she couldn't stop for 30 seconds and sign in. I'm sure she has been called in before for her son. If you have a child with an ASD, you spend a LOT of time at school. There is no way she didn't know there was a sign-in process.

And yes, I HAVE in fact dealt with an autistic child in full melt down. I've been that mom called to the school urgently to deal with my son. You know what, I took a minute to follow the school security procedures before I went to his classroom.

All that said, calling the police on her and arresting her for trespassing? That seems over the top. Schools have security procedures in place for a reason, but that reason should not be to intimidate parents from helping when needed.

Yeah, the sign-in process is probably not particularly onerous. Which is why I cannot understand the whole thing. And since I failed to mention it in my post, I completely agree that she was wrong to fail to sign in. I've been distracted and forgotten, but when I was reminded I was happy enough to do it. They do this for our kids' protection...I see no reason to not comply. And I'd have gone to the office to do it, even if my son was in full on meltdown mode -- it'd take awhile to calm him anyway, so a minute more won't make much difference. OTOH, I see no reason --again, absent missing information-- that failing to sign should lead to a parent being arrested for trespassing. That seems like a ridiculous over-reaction. But again, I am sure we don't have all the information. Schools can be rigid with their rules and procedures, but THIS rigid? Something ain't right.

I agree that the signing in process is very important, but I wish there were more details on why she was arrested. That seems too extreme to me.

I mean, here's an example. When I first started doing school visits I didn't know I needed to sign in. I have no kids, the last time I was in a school I was a student and you don't sign in as a student, I am not familiar with needing to do that. And as much as it would be nice to say that the school told me ahead of time that I needed to sign in, they didn't. So here I show up at a school and find my way to the library where I'm supposed to go, and there the librarian asks if I've signed in. I haven't. So I go back and sign in.

Should the cops have been called on me? Because I simply didn't know? Surely there is room for such situations. I understand that the mother should have known, but saying that the automatic result of not signing in is being arrested, not being approached and asked to sign in, that scares me quite frankly.

I get that the school needed a procedure for visitors to follow. I think where this went ridiculously too far was calling the cops on a known parent and having her arrested. Wouldn't a reminder have sufficed? Is it really the schools role to "make an example of" some hapless parent of a special needs student?

And schools scratch their heads at why there is lack of parental involvement in school and not enough parent volunteers. When you know you could be arrested and hauled off to jail for forgetting to dot some bureaucratic i at school, staying as far away as possible except when it's unavoidable is probably best practice.

BTW, I just delivered my husband's prescription medication to the school where he teaches. I did sign in and out, but now I wonder if I should be worried that they've sent the cops after me for "making a drug delivery on school property."

Although signing in is not a particularly onerous requirement, having the mom arrested goes too far. How about using this incident as a reminder to all parents that they must follow the sign-in procedure, for the safety of THEIR kids? Or use the incident as a call for brainstorming a better sign-in policy. I'd even support levying a small fine--maybe they could use the funds to get a fingerprint scan before someone can be buzzed in.

Is there a clause in the local tresspassing laws that state if a person signs a book they are not tresspassing? Otherwise, she simply broke school policy and not the law and should never have been arrested.

The whole thing seems like it could have been solved with a bit of communication.

The stories on this are all one-sided in the extreme. As reported, I would say the school principal was wrong--horribly wrong--to call the police and have the mother arrested.

If the reporting is correct, if there is no missing information, it could very well be a career-ending mistake on the part of the principal. And that would be completely fair, given what we know.

I think, however, that there is more to this story. A lot more, imo.

If an ambulance crew arrived to aid a teacher who hurt her back so bad she needed to go to the hospital, would that ambulance crew be required to sign in?

And would an administrator call the police on that ambulance crew if they refused to sign in because they wanted to get to their patient?

And would the cops go ahead and arrest the crew?



(I threw my back out once and an ambulance needed to come. I was frozen in a doubled-over position with my back totally locked up. At the ER, my back muscles got injected with a prescription strength muscle relaxer.)

Plot Device said:

If an ambulance crew arrived to aid a teacher who hurt her back so bad she needed to go to the hospital, would that ambulance crew be required to sign in?

And would an administrator call the police on that ambulance crew if they refused to sign in because they wanted to get to their patient?

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I'd want to be on the ambulance crew just so I could say "Go ahead, call the police. I'll see you in court."

And would the cops go ahead and arrest the crew?



(I threw my back out once and an ambulance needed to come. I was frozen in a doubled-over position with my back totally locked up. At the ER, my back muscles got injected with a prescription strength muscle relaxer.)

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The police who arrested that woman - did THEY sign in before they arrested her???

benbradley said:

The police who arrested that woman - did THEY sign in before they arrested her???

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(another) True story follows:

I was 20 years old. I got a job at a vegetarian food production plant and unbeknownst to everyone --including me-- I was allergic to the food being produced. It's called tempeh, and it's a soybean-based food which gets fermented over a 3-day period into fuzzy white cakes covered with a white fungus. The fermentation process involves an air-borne spore called rhizopus. And I am allergic to that air-borne spore.

My first day on the job I was shown the whole food plant and shown my duties. Then at 3:00 I had finished my shift and started walking home. I was wheezing as I walked and didn't understand why. The wheezing got worse and I was coughing and gasping. I began to sense I was having an asthma attack, something I hadn't suffered for years (not since I was a kid). I was over a mile from home yet and knew I couldn't keep walking. I made my way to a roadside payphone and called my aunt to tell her I was having an asthma attack along the side of a secondary highway. She told me to stay put and that she'd come and get me.

As soon as I hung up the phone, I glanced at the super-shiny coin box face found there on the front of the payphone --the extra shiny box with the keyhole in it and which is so smooth and so shiny that it can act as a mirror. I could see my reflection in the mirror-like surface of the coin box and my eyes proved all bloodshot and my eyelids swollen. And that was when I realized it wasn't merely an asthma attack, it was an allergic reaction.

My aunt sent Gayle to come and get me. Gayle pulled up to the payphone, I jumped in and --between my wheezings-- I told her it was an allergic reaction. She drove like hell to the local hospital.

Strangely the ER was kind of empty and dead. She drove up to the ER entrance and had me hop out and told me to go inside while she parked the car.

Still wheezing, and holding both hands against my throat, I walked in and found a super-dead ER. There was a young woman sitting at the receptionist desk chatting up at two young guys in scrubs (I think they were male nurses) who were both standing at/leaning over from the patient-side of the desk and laughing and chatting down toward her. I approached the desk in hesitation because I didn't want to interrupt their conversation. I walked up very slowly and their heads all turned to me. The woman had a rather blank face while the two guys both registered alarm on their faces at the sight of me.

"Can I help you?" the woman asked me.

"Excuse me, *wheeze wheeze*," I said, my hands still around my throat, "I'm not sure but I think I might be having an allergic reaction *wheeze wheeze*."

She pulled out a clipboard and pen, looked up at me and said, "Name please?"

I was about to give her my name, but one of the two guys politely interrupted. He displayed what superficially looked like amusement, but actually he was super concerned and trying to inject a laugh into his efforts to derail what the receptionist was doing. With a smile and a half a laugh in his tone, he waved his index finger side-to-side at her and quietly said, "Uh ... no." The receptionist froze at his disapproval and waited for what he had to say next.

He turned to me --a little more serious this time-- pointed at me and just as quietly said, "You come with me. Right now."

I followed after him (still wheezing still clutching my throat). He walked quickly into the ER itself, and within 90 seconds all of the following happened:

-- I was helped up onto an exam bed.
-- Heated blankets got thrown over me.
-- Oxygen tubes went up my nose.
-- A doctor came in brandishing an adrenaline shot.

Gayle eventually walked in (ran in actually) from the parking lot right as I was getting injected.

We all finally got around to the paperwork after perhaps half an hour of my being observed for proper recovery from the injection.

Motley said:

Is there a clause in the local tresspassing laws that state if a person signs a book they are not tresspassing? Otherwise, she simply broke school policy and not the law and should never have been arrested.

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This is what I was wondering, too. My understanding is that trespassing is only if you're in a private/restricted area without permission. This woman was called to come to the school and was let in the door, so she had authorization to be there. The only way I could see it counting as trespassing is if they requested that she leave because she refused to sign in, and she didn't listen.

Breaking a school policy is not the same thing as trespassing.

Plot Device said:

If an ambulance crew arrived to aid a teacher who hurt her back so bad she needed to go to the hospital, would that ambulance crew be required to sign in?

And would an administrator call the police on that ambulance crew if they refused to sign in because they wanted to get to their patient?

And would the cops go ahead and arrest the crew?



(I threw my back out once and an ambulance needed to come. I was frozen in a doubled-over position with my back totally locked up. At the ER, my back muscles got injected with a prescription strength muscle relaxer.)

Click to expand...

No, the ambulance crew wouldn't be required to sign in.

A parent is a theoretical risk and the school apparently wants a record of entries.

They're visibly an ambulance crew and there's a record of them being there much more official than the sign-in sheet.