Spec ed preschooler left on bus all day & alone
A special education preschool student who is on the autism spectrum and who is non-verbal was left all day alone on a school bus in Hartford (CT) on Monday. Both the bus driver and the monitor did not realize that the child had not gotten off at his morning drop-off, as reported in the November 27th Hartford Courant. “For reasons that remain unclear,” the boy did not get off the bus, which was driven to the Hartford yard, and was found on it at 2pm by the driver.
The driver said he discovered the child after he got back on the bus and “heard some scratching noises,” said Sandra Cruz-Serrano, the district’s chief operations officer. “When he went to look, he found the little boy…………The mom said the child appeared OK………The boy is nonverbal, so there is little they can ascertain.”
Since the child cannot speak, the driver and the monitor, and the school district, ought to have been instructed to take extra measures to ensure that all the children were present and accounted for at all times. You would think—-but it seems that another party is involved, or should have been more involved, in seeing to this preschooler’s transportation and safety. Both the driver and the monitor have been suspended without pay pending an investigation by Gianni Zarrilli, who is the director of school transportation for LogistiCare of Atlanta; LogistiCare is described as “a broker working for the city that hires bus companies to transport special education students.”
So Hartford’s school district has hired a “broker” which (according to its website “partners” with government agencies, etc., to then hires bus companies to drive special ed students, who are likely to have difficulty communicating even with people they are familiar with.
Who is driving this bus?
9 opinions for Spec ed preschooler left on bus all day & alone
Shawn
Nov 28, 2006 at 9:32 pm
The Hartford Courant sits downstairs unopened. I guess I need to go read the details.
I’m amazed this doesn’t happen more often. Our district also outsources transportation and we’ve had some similar scares. With three parties involved (the Special Education department, the transportation department, and the outside transportation company) it’s all to easy to avoid responsibility.
mcewen
Nov 28, 2006 at 9:50 pm
This happened to an acquaintance of mine a few years back. When I first started putting junior on the bus, I was assured that policies had been implemented to prevent such an occurrence from being repeated. Should we email our school policies to them?
Best wishes
Kristina Chew, PhD
Nov 28, 2006 at 11:58 pm
The article notes the district’s policies—-do those in yours differ?
Any extra details in the Hartford Courant?
Julia
Nov 29, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Um, at my son’s school, the drivers of the REGULAR buses have clipboards to check off the children getting onto the bus — you’d think something as simple as that could work for ANY bus!
Shawn
Nov 30, 2006 at 1:09 am
Nothing else significant in the Courant yesterday and nothing at all today.
As I read and thought about this more, I think part of the problem is that we are putting pre-schoolers on buses. The objective is to transport the child from curb to curb. The objective should be to provide a safe transfer from the home all the way to the classroom. Instead we rely on cursory ‘handoffs’ from the bus to the school.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Nov 30, 2006 at 1:56 am
Our bus drivers and monitors work for the county and it is not a very big bus—and, my district calls immediately if a child is not on the bus and the parent has not called.
Charlie was 4 when he first took a bus and Jim and I both stood outside his window filled with, yes, terror——yes, the objective should be transportation from home to classroom. Who knows what can happen in the sometimes-chaos of the bus line.
Mike
Dec 1, 2006 at 12:56 am
Shawn,
Our school encourages the preschoolers to use the bus. We were terrified at first but it is part of the schools routine. They are very closely monitored from house to classroom with the goal of being ready for more and more independence as they progress through grade school. The buses drop the preschoolers off at a totally different part of the school and the teachers and aides escort the kids into the school. Each kid has their own routine depending on how able they are to deal with the transition and each kid is escorted into the school with an adult and everybody else waits onto the bus until an adult is available. Our son has a “daily planner” that they give him when he gets off the bus and it shows him the steps he needs to take to get into the school and ready to get into the classroom. We’ve actually watched the routine last year when we drove him to school. It is a cool, well organized routine and has gone a long way in helping him learn to follow multi step instructions.
Also, our school district is huge that I’m pretty sure we have our own buses and the drivers work for the district. He has different drivers on the way in then on the way home and we love both drivers and the sub that we sometimes get.
Having said that, I will be pissed if he ever gets lost in the system and want to know exactly what went wrong and what they plan to do about it. There’s no excuse for losing track of 4 year olds on the bus.
kelsi
Dec 10, 2006 at 6:54 pm
I think this is ridiculous!I mean really, if you have an autistic child on your bus, and are aware of it, be a responsible adult and check the bus. Especially at his stop. Make sure he gets off. It is so sad that something so simple could cause a problem.
kelsi
Dec 10, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Also, to add, im a middle school student and have recognized that my bus driver does not check us. If anyone gets on or off he doesn’t say a word. he may not think it’s a big deal until something like this happens.
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