Mission Public Schools superintendent Angus Wilson said they will be reviewing their procedures after it took almost four hours to inform a mother that her 15-year-old son had been injured in a fight.
The incident took place last Thursday (June 6) off school property during the lunch break.
According to Nicole Townsend, the injured student’s mother, the school knew about the fight at about 12:45 p.m., but she never received a call until after 4 p.m. that day.
READ MORE: Mission mom angry school didn’t inform her about fight
Townsend took her son to the emergency room and called Mission RCMP to report the incident.
While at the hospital, somebody sent a video of the fight to the victim’s phone. It showed her son taking several punches and being kicked while on the ground.
Wilson said the principal of Mission Secondary School was aware of the incident that took place, but wasn’t aware of the “scale of the incident.” He also said they investigated it right away.
While he could not get into details because of student privacy concerns, Wilson did say “if students disclose information” it would make the job much easier than if they are hard to get a hold of.
“We always review our processes to see how we can do them better. We also feel very upset when a violent incident occurs because that’s not why any of us became educators,” said Wilson.
Townsend said she feels the school failed her family by not contacting them immediately after they learned about the incident.
Wilson has met with Townsend and the mother of the other student in the fight. While no information will be released about the incident, Wilson did say they are interested in more than one student.
“When there is an incident like this, there is genuinely more than just the two actual students involved. There are bystanders and you potentially have people who are fire starters that provoke a situation and you have people filming it.”
When the video of the fight first appeared on social media, Wilson said it created a frenzy of negative comments.
“There has been a lot of people bombarding that mom with stuff which is really unfortunate. People need to be aware that their activities don”t necessarily resolve the situation for all the young people involved.
“We need to move forward with what’s going to happen for all these young people. Whatever consequences and all that. Everybody being a keyboard warrior is not really helpful,” said Wilson.
