When Should A School Notify Parents About Unplanned Absence?

A parent's worst nightmare; to have a child simply disappear. In Oregon City, Oregon, a sixteen year old girl ran away from home, instead of showing up for school one morning, and her parents were not notified of this until after 5:00 PM that day. Luckily, she was found, and now there is a local discussion in Oregon about the reporting of missing children when it concerns school. The awareness that stranger abductions culminating in murder usually feature the murder taking place within the first three hours of the abduction is key, here. Waiting until after 5:00 PM to file a report about a child who went missing hours earlier is an invitation to tragedy.

In 2011, Oregon passed a law, largely because seven year old Kyron Horman disappeared from school in 2010, that requires schools to notify parents when a child has an unplanned absence from school. The school board in the above case has, so far dodged questions from the public about whether 5:00 PM was too late to notify parents. A step in the right direction, however; is that the general public has taken notice of the potential danger to children and has begun to address it. Wouldn't it be a godsend if Marshall County, Kansas and USD 380 Vermillion, which employs the absurd and inane Tom Schroeder, who drops off children in random parts of Marshall County and does nothing but go home and eat dinner when they disappear, would show some civic concern about child safety, as well?