MA- Halloween parade officially cancelled

This is sad and paranoid, the children probably enjoyed this and will be denied because someone saw a registered sex offender near the school last year. So what, kids are mingling with them in stores, malls, buses, etc. all over town. In this event the children will be directly supervised by an adult..

10-8-2008 Massachusetts:

Merrill School Principal Kathryn Tripp officially scrapped her school’s Halloween parade Thursday amid fears for the safety of her young students.

In a letter to parents, Tripp said the traditional outdoor event was being cancelled for security reasons.

Those issues have been heightened by the media frenzy that followed Tripp’s tentative cancellation announcement in September, Bridgewater-Raynham School Committee Chairman Gordon Luciano said.

He said he got a call recently from Fox News asking if and when the event was being held. A small local gathering could have easily ballooned into a crowd of strangers, he said.


“You want to have a handle on how many people are coming and who they are,” Luciano said.

Tripp was pilloried in the press and on talk radio when she told the Early Childhood Parents Organization last month she planned to replace the parade with an alternate holiday event.

She was called a “killjoy” and a politically correct “pinhead” that bowed to religious pressure.

But Tripp only expressed concerns about lost classroom time and the security of 5-and 6-year olds walking around outside in costumes and masks, along with adults who could not be readily identified, ECPO president Kerri Wray said.

LaLiberte Elementary School Principal Dennis Bray ended his school’s Halloween parade three years ago over concerns about the gruesome costumes favored by his third- and fourth-graders.

No one had complained on religious grounds, he said.

The last school Halloween parade in Bridgewater ended in the late 1990s.

Luciano said new Superintendent Jacqueline Forbes sat down with building principals in August to discuss a variety of issues, including the safety and educational value of all activities in their schools.

He said neither the school committee nor parents groups have the authority to support or oppose the principals on policy decisions.

That falls under the purview of the school site councils that were established under the Education Reform Law, and are made up of parents, residents and staff.

“That’s the appropriate sounding board,” he said.
Tripp made the decision after speaking to parents and the school resource officer.

Luciano said the media might mock Tripp’s concern about the safety of children.

But last year police spotted a known registered sex offender walking in the area of the LaLiberte and Merrill schools.

“Incidents like that demand that we be vigilant,” he said. Many parents prefer weekend harvest fairs the entire family can attend, he said. ..News Source.. by Susan Parkou Weinstein