EAST ALTON, Ill. – Bars are now on some of the windows at Toddle Towne Learning Center in East Alton, Illinois, after a child survived a fall from a second story window March 14.
Authorities will not release the child’s age or condition, but Susan Berry, director of Toddle Towne, agreed to speak with FOX 2 News.
“We had never had any serious accident until three weeks ago, and on that day, a child fell into a screened window and the screen broke away from the window and he fell,” Berry said.
Berry said she also could not reveal the child’s age for privacy reasons, but she told us infants and toddlers remain downstairs with the upper level having classrooms of three-year-olds and up.
“We immediately went into what can we do to make sure things are safer,” she said, “…and to make sure accidents don’t occur, and so I spent the weekend looking for options to put safety bars on windows that didn’t make the kids feel like they were in prison.”
She said the big windows upstairs are fire escapes that cannot be blocked, but that they have disabled them from the inside.
“Now we are going through all of our policies and procedures and looking for any area where there might be a hidden danger that we didn’t think of, so we can proactively prevent any accidents from happening again,” she said.
Parent David Wallace commented, “Every second, I’m just glad it (did not involve) my kids.”
Wallace says his children once attended center.
“I’m still trying to process how this happened,” he said.
He says he knows first-hand what kids can get into.
“They’re adventurous, but they also need to be watched and be monitored,” he said.
Wallace encourages parents to look up a center’s inspection record, which Berry says she is prepared to talk about with parents.
“We’ve not had any parents withdraw their kids because they felt unsafe. They’ve asked us what we have done,” Berry said.
Daycare violation records in Illinois are available to search at the state’s Department of Children and Family Services.