A parent and teacher said a 5-year-old walked off Cragmont Elementary School’s campus in August and was found on Regal Road. Credit: Vanessa Arredondo/Berkeleyside
Multiple young children wandered off the Cragmont Elementary School campus during the district‑run LEARNS after‑school program last year before they were found and safely returned.
On Nov. 21, three children, ages 4 and 5, asked to leave Cragmont’s cafeteria, where the program is primarily held, and were allowed to go to the bathroom unattended, according to a parent of one of the children, who spoke to Berkeleyside on condition of anonymity.
The parent said the kids left the campus through an unfenced and poorly lit area sometime between 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., heading downhill toward Marin Avenue and Spruce Street. A neighbor found the parent’s child walking back toward campus alone and returned them to the school. The guardians of the other two children, the parent said, arrived to pick them up at school, discovered they weren’t there, and reunited with their kids only after searching for them off-campus.
Staff at the after-school program only realized the kids were missing when their guardians arrived to collect them, the parent said.
Dianna Mullins, a member of Cragmont’s School Site Council, said the November incident was the second time this school year that a young child has walked off the site unsupervised.
She said she heard from members of the school community of a similar incident that occurred in August, when a 5‑year‑old walked off campus and was found on Regal Road, a street adjacent to the school, by their mother. Mullins said she heard that the child ran into the street when they saw their mom driving up the road. An email sent by a Cragmont teacher to the superintendent and reviewed by Berkeleyside aligns with this account.
The front entrance of Cragmont Elementary School on Regal Road. The school is adjacent to Marin Avenue, one of Berkeley’s deadliest streets. Credit: Jerome Paulos
A spokesperson for the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) confirmed to Berkeleyside that two young kids left campus on Nov. 21, not responding to the parent’s claim about a third child. BUSD neither confirmed nor denied that a student walked off campus in August.
Cragmont Elementary is located in the Berkeley Hills, adjacent to Marin Avenue, one of the steepest streets in the Bay Area and among the deadliest in Berkeley.
On Wednesday night, the school board is expected to approve a plan to install fencing and gates around the perimeter of the school “due to staff safety concerns” and to “add an extra layer of protection to the site.” The district has not said directly that the fencing is tied to the site’s history of kids getting out.
The parent who spoke to Berkeleyside said that they consoled two on-site staff at the after-school program on Nov. 21. The teachers were distraught and told the parent they did not know how the children had gotten free. The parent said district administrators did not file or release an incident report, and nobody from the school or district contacted them afterward to check in.
Mullins, as well as the parent who spoke with Berkeleyside and others at Cragmont, have connected these incidents to long-time staffing challenges in the district’s after-school program, which serves students from transitional kindergarten through 5th grade. There are currently five staff vacancies across the district’s 12 LEARNS sites — including two at Cragmont — and the program has seen a large enrollment increase this year.
“When 4‑year‑olds walk off campus and no one notices, that’s kind of a big deal,” said Mullins, whose two children at Cragmont were not among those who wandered off.
The program’s new Expanded Learning Manager Joya Balk directed questions to the district’s communications office, which declined to make anyone available for an interview. Cragmont principal Rachel Porzig did not respond to a request for comment. In an unsigned email statement sent to Berkeleyside last month, the district said it responded to the Nov. 21 incident by reviewing site staffing and providing additional training “focused on student safety and elopement prevention.”
BUSD told Berkeleyside it has reinforced its supervision protocols and made “targeted adjustments to strengthen consistency and oversight” to reduce the chances of a similar incident occurring. The district also said it was “reinforcing staff expectations” and adjusted the program space and staffing structures “during key program times” to better support young children.
“We take incidents involving student supervision very seriously,” the statement reads. “Our focus remains on ensuring strong systems, clear expectations, and consistent oversight to prevent future occurrences.”
The district declined to provide further details about the November incident — including how long students were missing and how far from campus they were found — citing the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a federal law that prevents disclosure of information, such as a name or birthdate, that could lead to a specific student being identified. BUSD also stated that its policy is not to share timelines or internal operations related to incidents involving young children.
District increased after-care slots this year despite staff shortages
Mullins, who has long been pressing the district to fix structural problems in the after-school program, said the recent incidents highlight the safety risks posed by staffing shortages. The parent who spoke with Berkeleyside said they believed additional staff training might have also prevented the Nov. 21 incident.
The school district runs two after-school programs — BEARS, for low-income families, and LEARNS, open to all students.
Children work on the yearbook in the after-school program at Washington Elementary School. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside/CatchLight Local
Berkeley families have raised concerns about staffing shortages, long waitlists and low capacity at sites in the LEARNS programs for years. After-school care has recently been on shaky ground as BUSD operates under financial constraints. Last year, the district considered laying off all nine of its after-school coordinators but was ultimately able to avoid those cuts.
California mandates a staff-to-child ratio of 1:10 for transitional kindergarten. BUSD declined to answer how many LEARNS students and staff there were at Cragmont at the time the students left campus in November.
Mullins and the parent said there were about 20 students in the after-school group at the time. There were at least two designated after-school staff members working at the time, according to the parent who spoke with Berkeleyside.
While Cragmont staff are able to pick up extra hours working in the after-school program, they can usually only do so until 5 p.m. due to overtime constraints, a teacher said, though the LEARNS program runs until 6 p.m.
The district has in the past needed to reduce enrollment due to staffing vacancies. The program’s capacity in August was about 1,300 students, down from 1,900 in 2022.
There has been a huge surge of students into LEARNS this school year. This is partly due to increased demand for after-care after BUSD opened five new transitional kindergarten classes this year — more than ever before.
“An unprecedented number of TK applicants for our afterschool programs,” the district said in August, “places additional pressure on staffing and capacity.”
As of January, there are 2,230 students enrolled in LEARNS districtwide, including 93 students at Cragmont, according to data shared by BUSD. There are 78 total staff in the LEARNS program — a figure that doesn’t include school staff who work overtime in after-school or contract workers, employed through the outside agency Elevo Learning.
The Cragmont LEARNS program is among the most short-staffed in the district. It has a site coordinator and two instructional technicians, and it is without a program specialist, according to information shared by BUSD last week. A teacher told Berkeleyside that Cragmont does not contract with Elevo on-site.
The site coordinator at Cragmont, Aaron Grayson, is also responsible for supervising the program at Oxford Elementary. Grayson was not there at the time of the November incident, the parent said. Cragmont administrators and staff also help supervise the program.
Cragmont Elementary parents raise safety concerns
School community members, including staff and parents, sent at least two emails in December to city and school authorities requesting more be done to keep kids safe.
One, written by Mullins and copying other parents, stated that the incidents where kids went missing show “our children’s safety has been put in jeopardy” and asked for the creation of a plan to “ensure no child is ever left unsupervised again.”
Mullins argued in her email that Cragmont Elementary should have a full-time afterschool coordinator, a position she said is important “especially at campuses like Cragmont, where location and terrain require focused supervision.”
An open stairway up from Regal Road allows unfenced access to the Cragmont school grounds. BUSD said it will install wrought iron fencing and two pedestrian gates along Regal Street to “add an extra layer of protection to the site.” Credit: Vanessa Arredondo/Berkeleyside
Street access to Cragmont has raised concerns among parents and led to calls for securing the campus. Open stairways on both Marin Avenue and Regal Road provide entry to the school grounds. In a separate letter sent to BUSD administration following the November incident, a staff member argued that a gated fence around the school could have prevented the incidents.
If a construction contract on the consent calendar at Wednesday’s school board meeting is approved, BUSD will install wrought iron fencing and two pedestrian gates around the “front-upper portion” of campus, on Regal Street, and fences around the “lower backside” of campus, along Spruce Street, where classrooms are located. A chain-link fence will be installed at the first stairwell coming up from Spruce Street. The project, funded by Measure G, will cost $100,000.
Traffic safety around the area has also been a concern for many years, with discussions about safety on Marin Avenue mounting in 2021 after a driver and passenger were killed in a crash witnessed by Cragmont Elementary families. In 2024, a jogger was struck and killed by a motorist on Oxford Street. Drivers routinely exceed the posted limit of 20 mph.
Signs advising drivers to slow down are displayed along Marin Avenue headed down Spruce Street. Traffic safety concerns have mounted as at least three people have been killed in car crashes in the area in the last five years. Credit: Vanessa Arredondo/Berkeleyside
A spokesperson for Mayor Adena Ishii told Berkeleyside on Jan. 13 that Berkeley Councilmember Brent Blackaby responded to the issue in December by offering “appropriate city support” for BUSD.
“While the details of what occurred are concerning, this matter falls under the authority and responsibility of BUSD, and there is limited direct action the City can take on its own,” Ishii’s spokesperson, Melissa Male, wrote in an email. “We encourage parents to continue engaging with BUSD administrators and School Board directors to help identify a resolution that ensures all BUSD students are properly supervised and safe.”
“I share the concerns of parents around the safety of their kids at Cragmont,” Blackaby, who has two children at Cragmont, told Berkeleyside via email. “When I learned of this incident, I quickly reached out directly to the superintendent and BUSD leadership to urge them to take action.”
In 2025, a group of parents, including Mullins, who in addition to being on Cragmont’s School Site Council is a member of Berkeley’s Commission on the Status of Women, formed an informal advocacy group called Bridge the Care Gap to push for reforms in BUSD’s after-school program.
“It’s parents on the ground, and we’re trying to get somebody to pay attention,” Mullins said. “It shouldn’t be complicated to keep track of 4‑year‑olds. That needs to be the baseline.”
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