A fake parental note was all it took for a 7-year-old girl to successfully take the school bus home and excuse herself from an after-school program.
Rosabella Dahu from Texas managed to get herself dismissed from school after writing a note on a half-sheet of notebook paper, stating: “I want Rosabella to go too dus 131 today!”
The girl prepared the fake note in large print by herself, addressing it to a staff person from Sheldon Elementary in Houston, who wasted no time excusing little Rosabella. The girl then boarded the school bus to go home.
Rosabella’s father, Charlie, wasn’t at all pleased, transferring his daughter to a new school despite Sheldon’s promise of taking disciplinary action against the school caretakers involved. He lamented the lack of appropriate procedures in handling such situations.
“This is clearly the school’s fault. How a 7-year-old can trick you, it boggles the mind,” he told ABC News, noting the misspelling in the handwritten excuse letter.
Sheldon Elementary released a statement saying it is currently probing the case and reviewing its training procedures to ensure that its after-school grant program personnel can implement proper dismissal procedures.
Admitting it was a clever move on his daughter’s part, Charlie said he had already taken appropriate action for the child’s mistake. Rosabella knows it was wrong and the parents do not condone the act, he added.
A neighbor noticed that the child was outside their family home by herself in the afternoon of May 2, and then decided to alert the family when he felt something was amiss.
“She came to ask my wife to use the restroom and that’s when I figured there was something wrong,” recalled their neighbor Rolando Lozano, who took the child in while waiting for her dad.
Sheldon Elementary, however, maintained that every student’s safety is their “top priority.”
