Parents express frustration with North Penn School District officials in school safety forum

Dawn Timmeney
·2 min read

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Pa. - A heated meeting was held Tuesday night in a Montgomery County School District after a student was attacked with a metal Stanley cup. Parents and students want to know what’s being done to keep them safe.

Erin Blanc is the mother of a middle schooler, "What does it take to remove a student who is breaking the rules, hurting kids, repeatedly? Why are we allowing this?"

She said her fifth grade son was previously threatened by the 13-year-old who viciously struck a 12-year-old girl in the head with a metal Stanley mug in the Pennbrook Middle School cafeteria last month.

Superintendent Todd Baurer acknowledged they need to do better, "That is something that is going to be clearly investigated here, in this incident. How was the decision made? Why was the decision made?"

Bauer led the school safety forum at the high school along with a panel that included law enforcement and mental health experts.

Bauer explained, "I recognize sometimes decisions are made, and in the end, it was the wrong decision. Perhaps that was the case here."

One mother has three students in a district elementary school and says her children have also experienced violent behavior in the classroom by classmates.

Kelly Karetsky said, We know which students are the problem. I’ve spoken to the principal. She said they’re following policy as laid out. Well, let’s change the policy. I want to know my kids are safe and they’re gonna come home the way I sent them there. Right now, I don’t feel that."

Bauer responded, "I don’t disagree with anything I heard from you. Like you said, there needs to be a solution in between to make sure that environment is safe. Clearly, we have fallen short of that recently and we need to address it."

Stephanie Palovcak’s daughter was in the lunchroom when the attack happened. She says many of her questions were not answered. One of which was why were the students who witnessed the horror left there for so long? "It was awful and I think the worst part is how the kids were left there to watch the cleanup of the blood.

The superintendent says the district has hired an unbiased third party to investigate what happened last month at the middle school and how it was handled so something like it never happens again at a district school.