A series of miscommunications led to a five-year-old Bert Edwards elementary student walking three kilometres home alone last week.

The situation was “very unfortunate and inappropriate,” said Supt. Terry Sullivan, and led to an investigation to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

“We have a number of checks and balances in place to keep these situations from occurring,” he said. “It’s something that the principal was upset about and the staff were upset about and the parents were very upset about and the daycare.

“We don’t want a child of that age walking home from school that distance.”

The problem occurred Friday when the boy was playing in the yard after school during an early closure day.

His daycare bus came to pick him up and the caregiver was told he hadn’t come to school that day, said Sullivan.

There were different staffers than usual in place that day, he said, and several boys have the student’s first name, which may have led to confusion.

The boy eventually tried to go into the school and found the door locked so he opted to walk home.

The school’s front door was unlocked, said Sullivan, but the policy is to lock all other doors once school is out and students gone.

The situation has nothing to do with the district’s new security door-locking policy since that only applies when school is in session, he said.

An investigation led to a report being filed with Sullivan on Monday with measures to ensure it won’t happen again.

“We want to be satisfied that we put procedures into place so that we don’t have a reoccurrence of this in the future.”