A grandparent of a White County Student asked the White County School Board to make changes to the school’s bus driver protocols.
Resident Karen Stafford said her autistic non-verbal grandchild was left on the bus. That was not discovered until the bus returned to the school’s garage. Stafford said her grandchild was then taken back to school in a personal vehicle, which violates school policy. Stafford said she was most upset about the fact that she was not notified about the incident until a teacher told her.
“I’ve been told I have been overreacting, but there is no such thing as overreacting when your child is left alone on a bus, and no one even tells you,” Stafford said. “So I am asking this board to create mandated transportation protocols.”
School Board Chairman Bob Young apologized on the board’s behalf for the incident and stated there are protocols in place. Young said the board will review its protocols to see what can be done to prevent this from happening again.
“From a chairman standpoint, speak to the director, and go back and look at what’s in place now, and look and see if there is any areas for improvement and how that might could take place,” Young said. “We do feel like we have a very stringent and thorough policy in place, but we are gonna go back and revisit it because I think this situation merits that.”
Young said the bus attendant has been let go, and the driver has been moved.
“This was human error on the standpoint of not checking at the school, and we certainly would own that,” Young said. “The thing that was pretty much out of our control, and I appreciate the director and the action he took from a disciplinary standpoint. But personnel made a very bad decision on how they tried to rectify the situation. And that was concerning. I appreciate the fact that our director took the steps that he did.”
Stafford made a suggestion of having a checklist of students that has to be filled out each time to ensure the safety of the kids.
