School officials at Yates Magnet Elementary School in Schenectady, N.Y. totally bought it when a kindergarten girl showed up on Wednesday all by herself and pretended to be a new student all day.
The student, Janeya Nevins, ended up at Yates Elementary because she got on the wrong school bus in the morning, reports the Times Union.
A substitute driver was driving the bus.
Officials at Yates Magnet School seem to have been expecting a different new student on Wednesday—a first-grade girl. They asked Nevins if she was that first grader upon her arrival. For reasons that are unclear, Nevins decided to tell school officials that she was, indeed, this new student.
Happily convinced, school officials dutifully began a new-student intake process.
Apparently, the parent-free, five-year-old girl responded to the name school officials had suggested for her for the rest of the day. She even wrote it on papers, worksheets, etc.
The kindergartener is actually a student at Howe International Magnet School, just over two miles away.
“While the student did impersonate another student, which didn’t raise any red flags, the situation has brought to light some other serious issues that need to be addressed on our end,” Schenectady school district Larry Spring told the Times Union.
“We have to remember that she is a kindergartner who was alone,” Spring added.
By Wednesday afternoon, the girl’s mother, Patricia Rodriguez, got wind that her daughter had not shown up at Howe International, like she should have.
The frantic mother called the police. The police commenced an immediate investigation and quickly determined that Rodriguez’s daughter had gone to the wrong school and stayed there all day.
Rodriguez is happy that her child is safe, but alarmed about the daylong mix-up.
“Hell, I wanted to die,” she told local NBC affiliate WNYT.
“She’s a kindergartner. That’s number one. This other child is a first-grader,” the frustrated mom observed. “It’s still upsetting to me.”
Superintendent Spring promised to try really hard to make things better.
“We will be taking a close look at our school intake process and develop a system to ensure the identification of any new students as they enter the schools,” he told the Times Union. “There was a series of events, that while unusual, we should have discovered where this child was.”
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