The “open and inviting school culture” at Highland Magnet School in Bend took a hit Sunday when Principal Paul Dean announced new restrictions on parents’ entering the school during busy times.

The announcement followed a student’s report Friday that a man exposed himself in a school hallway around 3:20 p.m., about the time school lets out and parents arrive to pick up their children.

Bend Police gathered conflicting statements by several witnesses at the Newport Avenue school, said police spokesman Lt. Chris Carney.

The student told a parent during the drive home what the student had seen, according to an email message Sunday from Dean to Highland parents.

Carney said the school resource officer planned to interview the child who made the report, a 10-year-old, today.

Dean declined Monday to discuss details of the incident, citing the police investigation.

His email described a man seen by a teacher in the hallway as being in his early 60s, medium height, balding with wispy white hair, in blue shorts and a button-up short-sleeve shirt.

Carney said police have identified no suspects.

“We had the police over here this afternoon gathering more information,” Dean said Monday. “They will be interviewing some students and anyone else that might have information to be able to identify who it was. We don’t know anything about the individual, and that’s what we’re hoping the police will figure out for us.”

Meanwhile, Dean decided to put off-limits the hallways where arriving parents waited in the final moments of the school day and reinforce other measures aimed at enhancing school security.

Those measures include increasing hallway and school ground supervision; asking teachers to stand outside their classroom doors as students arrive and leave each day; and reminding students to report anything “strange, odd or out of the ordinary.”

He said the student involved did what the school instructs its students to do: report what they saw.

“The student really did the courageous thing,” Dean said.

From now on, parents must wait outside the building at the start and end of each school day, unless they have specific business inside, according to Dean’s email. They must enter only through the front entrance.

All visitors will be expected to sign in and wear an identifying badge, he said Monday.

The restriction is meant to make it easier for faculty and staff to supervise arriving and departing students.

The practice of allowing parents to congregate inside the school at the day’s end may have allowed an intruder to slip into the building, the principal wrote to parents. Dean’s email also noted that the noise made by parents talking in the hallways proved a distraction to the final 15 minutes of class.

Dean wrote that following the Newtown, Conn., school shooting in December, in which 20 elementary school students were gunned down by an intruder, the Highland school safety committee considered restricting parents’ access at drop-off and pick-up times.

“But we worried that such a move would adversely impact the friendly, open and inviting school culture that we have come to love at Highland.”

On Monday, Dean lamented that “one person’s act has the potential to undermine and harm that school culture, so that’s the struggle I have when I’m making this decision. How do I enhance student safety and protect something that people love about this school?”

He said the majority of parents who responded by email Monday agreed with his decision. Some felt he did too little, others that he overreacted, he said.

“The response of parents has mostly been one of sadness and shock that something like this could happen,” Dean said. “I take the most pride in parents feeling that Highland is a safe place.”

Dean said attendance Monday was as high as any day the previous week; no parent apparently felt compelled to keep a student home out of concern for their safety.

Bend-La Pine Schools spokeswoman Julianne Repman said schools throughout the district are expected to adhere to a set of safety protocols that include visitors signing in, limited access to a main entrance and instructing students on reporting anything out of the ordinary.

The incident at Highland Magnet School on Friday is “an example of things working out in the end the right way,” said Repman.