Edmond Kindergartner Locked Outside During After School Program

Jon Jordan, News 9

EDMOND, Oklahoma – An Edmond kindergartner was locked outside during an after school program and the boy's father said no one noticed his son was missing.

News 9 couldn't get an exact time frame for how long the boy was outside, at the most the school says 20 minutes, but the boy's father said even one minute is too long.

Matthew Johnson said his five-year-old son, a kindergartner at Haskell Elementary School, is

traumatized after he was locked outside the school at an after school program.

"He didn't want to go to school this morning. He didn't want to get left outside," said Johnson.

When Johnson arrived to pick up his son, he found him in tears.

"One of the teachers had told me at some point in time, when they were going from one building to another, the gym…Somewhere in that travel he got trapped outside, left outside," said Johnson.

Johnson said his son was found by someone not associated with the school and when he confronted the school about it, he got little sympathy.

"It just didn't seem like anyone wanted to take responsibility," said the kindergartner's father.

Brenda Lyons, spokesperson for the Edmond public school district, said the school does feel bad, but Johnson didn't hear the true account of what happened.

"It is an unfortunate incident," said Lyons. "The supervisor of the after school program sent him across the hall to the computer lab to get his results and he was suppose to come back to the cafeteria...Apparently he went outside."

Lyons added it's not uncommon for a kindergartner to be left unsupervised.

"To go to the restroom for example, they are going out to the restroom and back to the classroom on their own. It's not an unusual occurrence for a student to go across the hall," said Lyons.

Regardless of what happened, Johnson hopes no child has to go through what his son did.

"I just want to say something so this sort of thing doesn't happen again," said Johnson.

Edmond school officials said after the incident, their after school staff will be more aware and may even begin incorporating a buddy system.