Sycamore preschooler wandered out of classroom, found by cops minutes later, authorities say

SYCAMORE – A 3-year-old Sycamore preschooler was returned to his mother by a DeKalb County sheriff’s deputy after he wandered out of his classroom during school hours recently, the child’s mother and local authorities said.

Sycamore Community School District 427 superintendent Steve Wilder, Sycamore law enforcement officials and Chrystal Ciodyk, the child’s mother, recently detailed the ordeal to Shaw Local News Network. Authorities said the child was located on school grounds with another class shortly after being discovered missing.

Ciodyk said she’s telling her story because she wants to see better district-to-parent communication. Wilder said the district is considering adding a child safety gate to preschool classroom doors in District’s 427′s Little Spartans program at South Prairie Elementary School.

Here’s what we know

Ciodyk said she was waiting in the car pick up line about 3:10 p.m. Sept. 4 at South Prairie Elementary School, 820 Borden Ave., to pick up her son, Aleks, from Sycamore’s Little Spartans preschool program when she saw a DeKalb County sheriff’s deputy carrying her child outside of the building.

“I noticed, first, one police car come into the parking lot, and then I saw another police car come into the parking lot, and I was thinking, ‘That’s strange,’” Ciodyk said. “Then I saw a police officer walking towards [sic] the building with my son in his arms. So I ran up to him and I said ‘Why do you have my son?’ and he said, ‘Oh, they lost him and I found him in a field,’ and I just was in a panic, like, how? What do you mean they lost him?”

DeKalb County Sheriff Andy Sullivan confirmed in an email to Shaw Local News Network that a sheriff’s deputy found Ciodyk’s son after receiving a request for assistance from the district to help find a student who was reported to no longer be with his class.

[ 2 DeKalb kindergartners went missing on 1st day of school; their parents want accountability ]

In an email to Shaw Local News Network, Sycamore Police Chief Jim Winters wrote that Sycamore police officers also responded to the call.

“Multiple officers from our department responded, and a DeKalb County deputy on his way to the Sandwich Fair also responded,” Winters wrote. “Within approximately 5 minutes of receiving the report, the student was located by the deputy with other South Prairie students on the soccer field on the north side of the school. He was immediately reunited with his mother at the school.”

The following day, Ciodyk said she kept her son out of his Little Spartan classroom as she and his father assessed what to do next.

“I’m just beside myself at the circumstances, and I don’t understand how they can allow this to happen,” Ciodyk said. “I’m terrified. My son could have went into a pond and drowned. He could have gotten hit by a car. He could have gotten kidnapped. I mean, anything. I just don’t understand how they allowed him to walk out of the classroom, get outside. Nobody called me, and why weren’t there protocols already put up to prevent that from happening?”

Unrelated but similar concerns recently were voiced by some DeKalb School District 428 parents after the district could not account for their kindergartners’ whereabouts on school buses. The incidents reported on the children’s first day of school led to public backlash in DeKalb and some on the DeKalb school board to apologize for the ordeals. DeKalb Superintendent Minerva Garcia-Sanchez previously said the district is “conducting a full investigation of the events of the day.”

Sycamore Superintendent Steve Wilder said a disruption in the Little Spartans classroom was the reason the 3-year-old was able to leave his classroom and venture outside, where some South Prairie Elementary students were ending their school day with recess.

“The woman’s son walked out of the classroom, there was disruption in the classroom and staff was distracted for just a minute, and [the preschooler] happened to join up with another class that was going out to recess,” Wilder said.

When Little Spartan preschool staff realized the child was no longer in the classroom, they notified the building’s administration, who took what Wilder described as an “all-hands-on-deck approach” to the situation.

The building’s administration notified “all available staff,” Wilder said, and reached out to a school resource officer. The SRO wasn’t at South Prairie Elementary School that afternoon but made the decision to put out a call to all available officers for assistance, Wilder said.

“The mother is correct that officers responded and when they were assisting with the search, one of the officers, from my understanding, found the student, was bringing the student into the building,” Wilder said.

Ciodyk’s son was found by a sheriff’s deputy on a soccer field adjacent to the playground immediately outside South Prairie Elementary School. Elementary students and their chaperones were on the playground at the time, minutes before the preschooler was meant to be dismissed for the day.

“They’re telling me that they think he joined a line of kindergarteners going out to the playground, and that’s how he got out there, but I don’t understand how the kindergarten teacher didn’t notice him in the line or notice him on the playground, so that’s a bit upsetting,” Ciodyk said.

Wilder said the district is considering adding a child gate across the doorway to all Little Spartans classrooms. Ciodyk said she wished that measure was already in place.

“I don’t understand why that wasn’t happening in the first place. If other classrooms have gates, why doesn’t his classroom?” Ciodyk said. “You would think that they would have some way of keeping them a little more contained. And then how many teachers were out on the playground with all those kids, that he apparently got in a line and went out? How many teachers noticed that he wasn’t a part of their group?”

Wilder said students running away from their classrooms is not a new phenomenon, and has a remained a point of focus throughout his career.

“Students walking out of class unfortunately, it doesn’t happen very often, but throughout my career it’s one of things that we’re sensitive to, that we know does happen from time to time,” Wilder said. “This was a unique situation here in Sycamore because the student happened to join up with another class, and it was very near the end of the day. Unfortunately, sometimes students do either attempt, or sometimes are able to leave a class.”

Ciodyk, on the other hand, said she wished school officials had reached out to her while her son was unaccounted for.

“Nobody had called me, so that was really upsetting,” the mother said. “I was sitting in my car, getting ready to walk up to the door to get him. I would have been out looking for him if I knew he ... was missing.”