The Burlingame School District has confirmed the tragedy and says it is now "reviewing facility-use procedures." That's bureaucratic language for we don't know how this happened, and we're trying to figure out what went wrong before someone asks us in a way we can't deflect.

Details remain painfully scarce. We don't yet know what kind of table it was, how it was stored or positioned, whether it was properly secured, or what level of adult supervision was present at the time. What we do know is that a child went to an after-school program — a setting parents trust to be safe — and never came home.

Schools are supposed to be among the safest places a kid can be. Parents send their children there every single day operating on that basic assumption. When something this catastrophic happens, "reviewing procedures" isn't a response. It's a placeholder. The community — and especially this child's family — deserves a transparent, detailed account of exactly what happened and why.

Here's the broader question that should make every parent in the Bay Area uncomfortable: what are the safety standards for after-school programs operating on public school campuses? Who inspects the facilities? Who ensures that heavy furniture, equipment, and infrastructure are secured? Is there a protocol, or is it the kind of thing everyone assumes someone else is handling?

Government accountability isn't just about budgets and spending. It's about the basic competence of the institutions we're forced to fund and expected to trust. A child is dead. A family is shattered. And right now, all we have is a vague promise to look into it.

Looking into it isn't enough. Burlingame owes this family — and every family with a kid on that campus — full transparency, an independent investigation, and real accountability if negligence played any role. No quiet procedural updates buried in a board meeting agenda. No passive-voice press releases.

A six-year-old deserves better than that. We all do.