When families send their children to school, they entrust educators with more than academics—they trust them to act in loco parentis, with the same care and protection a parent would give. But too often, school districts treat that duty as an administrative box to check rather than a real commitment to safety.
As parents, we discovered that our child’s safety plan was not a guarantee at all. Even after a documented elopement from campus, there were multiple additional incidents where our child left school grounds, and we weren’t even notified. These weren’t minor oversights—they were life-safety failures.
But what was perhaps most revealing was how the District responded to the teacher who tried to help us. Instead of supporting his advocacy for our child’s safety, they reprimanded him in writing, warning he could only advocate for families to oversight agencies on his own time. In their own words, they told him to stop helping parents while “on the clock.”
That attitude sends a chilling message: advocacy is disloyalty. It says safety is less important than controlling the narrative. And it punishes the very people willing to stand up for vulnerable students.
Parents shouldn’t have to beg for basic safety. Teachers shouldn’t be threatened for helping families understand their rights. And schools shouldn’t be allowed to prioritize liability management over the lives of the children they’re supposed to protect.
Because in the end, acting in loco parentis means one thing: doing what a good parent would do. And a good parent would never stay silent.