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Just awful.  They won't even let the family see the tape when the child was alone on the bus.  I understand their desire to respect the privacy of other kids, but if he was alone for at least half of that time, they should be able to see part of that tape.  They should push to get privacy waivers from other parents of kids on the bus, just for that particular bus ride.  They're concerned that the child may have been sexually abused, and they're not allowed to see what happened.  The child isn't verbal enough to tell them what happened.  

I hate transportation   We've had our own difficulties with them, but nothing like this.

poor kid.....

That's just an excuse. You don't have "privacy" on a public transportation service. What are they expected to do there? Masturbate???

I do not understand exactly what happened.

In our school district, for kids that young or kids with disabilities there is supposed to be an adult(parent or other caregiver) waiting for them when they are dropped off at the bus stop.  If no one there waiting for them, the driver radios in and the parent is called or the bus driver is supposed to take the kid to the police station and wait for the parent come there.  The kid is not supposed to be alone.  Also maybe the kid did not know his full name or address so the driver could not drop him off.  

Could be some misunderstanding about that.  I just think that there are some details missing.

This happens too often.  Does anybody remember a thread I posted to a news story about a year ago?  It was about a little kindergarten boy who fell asleep curled up on a seat at the back of the bus on his way to his first day at school.  The driver returned the bus to the depot, which was left in the full heat of the Australian summer sunshine, and went home for the rest of the day.  He locked the bus but had not bothered to check that no children were left on board.  And the depot at that stage of the day was empty.  Apparently the little boy only survived the searing heat because he had his drink bottle of water with him.  It had enough water in it to keep him alive.  If it hadn't have been for that, he could easily have perished before the driver returned and found him still locked inside.  

Why on earth don't these people in authority take more care?  I remember I got left once when our school went on the bus to the nearest large town for a swimming carnival.  Our teacher (who was also the headmaster, I was about seven at the time) must not have bothered to do a head count at the end and they just all went back to the school.  I still don't know how I got left, as I'm very good about times, etc. and very punctual.  But I came out after getting dressed and everybody had just gone.  I went to the pool attendant and told him, he said he'd ring the school.  

Well, I sat there and waited for over an hour, and got fed up.  So decided I'd walk home.  I was bloody lucky I didn't get picked up and murdered, I suppose.  I did refuse a lift from one man who stopped by telling him I lived just at the end of the street.  But eventually the teacher found me on the road halfway home and we went on back to school.  Ever after he'd make nasty comments about how I kept "getting lost", but I was never lost.  I knew exactly where I was at all times.  Which is more than I can say for his ability to keep track of twenty five children. After taking the same number of children on preschool excursions myself, I know that you need to do a head count.  It's not difficult.  But I also realize, rather chillingly, how few of the others were as rigorous as I was.  It was more a philosophy of 'she'll be right, nothing will go wrong', and usually that is true.  But that doesn't excuse the laxness on their part, because there will eventually be a time when something will go wrong.  And you need to be alert to deal with it, not talking to your colleagues about what you did the night before.  Or whatever.

Alison

It isn't considered public transportation in the usual sense.  Once a child gets on a bus, they are in the care of the school - they have the same right to privacy a child would have at school.  

There needs to be a middle ground and the schools need to reassess their priorities.  Keeping a child safe is more important than privacy.  

For instance, what do you do when an idiot bus driver encourages your child to ride to school with a stranger without a booster seat when the bus is overfull?  The child was already on the bus, at which time he was technically in the care of the school and not the parent dropping the child off at the bus stop, and was kicked off. Shouldn't the parents have the right to hear that conversation take place as it was recorded by the cameras on the bus?  Shouldn't the parents be assured that that bus driver was properly  educated about child safety?  

This exact scenario happened to my oldest son.  Thank God he's a smart kid and he refused to get in the car with a stranger.  This driver is still driving the same bus this year.  My son is no longer a bus rider!

Edited to add:  Shortly after this incident, I saw a bus driver texting while driving.  The bus was moving, and the driver was texting.  Unbelievable.

This post was last modified: 09-05-2012 11:44 PM by AspieMomma.

If a child is riding a special ed bus in our area, their name and address should be given to the bus driver well in advance or they can't ride.  My youngest son isn't verbal enough and is too cognitively impaired to know his full name and address right now.  

A few times someone at his second preschool was not out to take him off the bus (this fact is debatable, I got conflicting stories from bus driver and second preschool) and they just took him back to school and called me.  I'm not sure why this child was left alone on the bus.  

We're lucky this year, his bus driver and the aid are great   I was prepared to have to drive him, but we tried the bus first and boy and I glad.  Only one incident where they tried to pick him up at the wrong school - I called to ask about it, left a number, nobody got back to me, surprise surprise - but it seems to be resolved.  Who knows what we'll get next year.  If it is a problem, I can drive him, but it is a little far to ferry him around 4 times a day.  I guess I could just hang out at the library all day, it is right between both schools.  

It just aggravates me that all of the other people who care for my kids are specially trained and educated, and the aids and bus drivers can be so remarkably inept and I'm supposed to just leave my kids with them with no way of knowing what is happening on that bus.  With special needs kids, abuse would be so easy to get away with    Argh!

My son would love to go to an after school club on a Monday with his friend, and pestered me about it for a while.  My son already has a place at Out of School Care which runs within the school he attends and this other club is in a community building in another area, and children go in a minibus to it, and are then dropped off afterwards back at school to be collected.

Earlier this year, after much pestering I went to this other club to check it out and to speak to the organisers.  Although the club itself seemed ok, and are accustomed to children with different needs, the insurmountable problem was with the bus to and fro.  They seemed to work on a very casual basis, and I would have had to communicate directly with the driver, which just wasn't an acceptable arrangement for me.  My son isn't happy that he can't go, but I'm just not prepared to let him go when the people seemed so clueless.

AspieMomma,
I hope you raised Cain at the school about this!  I was ropeable after my daughter, then in her first year of high school, was getting off the bus and the driver didn't bother to come to a full stop, causing her to fall off, whack her chin on the ground, and covered in bruises.  And although he must have seen her lying on the road crying, he didn't bother to stop and investigate, just sped off, leaving her to get off the road and out of the way of on-coming traffic by herself.

As soon as I found out, I got onto the bus company and tore strips off them verbally, threatened to sue, told them to be glad my daugher hadn't hit her head and died on the road, and generally was a pain in the *** until they fired the driver who had apparently had other parents complain as well.  

I know this idiot would probably have just got another job somewhere, but at least I let the company know how I felt about it and was (unlike the other parents) prepared to go further with my complaint unless he was fired.

The upshot however is that Lauren will not get on a bus to this day, she's developed something of a phobia about them.  

Alison

This post was last modified: 09-06-2012 06:57 AM by Alison.

I strongly suggest you get on a FIRST NAME basis with the bus driver - it can be done--- I would hate for your son to end up like mine and not be comfortable with clubs.. when clubs are a major saving grace of being in a school system....
make it work-- I hope you can.
imo the bus driver knowing you know their number would know and care more about your child than the others... unless I am misunderstanding what you mean by "communicate directly with the driver"...

They need to release the tape. Why do they record it if they aren't going to release the video when something like this happens? Even if they only show the part where the kid was alone, that would be great.

Now that is just ridiculous. I cannot stand texting while driving. It can wait. No text message is worth lives.

I did.  I was furious.  I spoke to the school principal, I spoke to transportation (they were remarkably rude), and was assured that the problem would be remedied.  They refused to release the recording to me.  The principal was as appalled as I was, and she made it sound like she would address it herself, so I was satisfied with that.  

Same flippin driver this year. It was clearly not remedied.  I was chided by the principal for not letting oldest ride the bus this year They said he "needed the bus experience," which apparently comes with the "child abduction experience," if you're lucky!  

I can't believe that happened to your daughter, Alison   Unfortunately, it isn't a company, it is a part of the public school system, so they have ridiculous privacy rules at the expense of child safety.  They won't even tell you if someone has been reprimanded (privacy!), and they rarely fire people.  This is why kids end up dying from being left inside buses, there's no accountability, there's not punishment for being an irresponsible idiot!

I understand what you're saying about clubs, but I don't think this is the kind of club you're thinking of.  It's a funded project in an area of the city with high levels of deprivation, drug and alcohol addiction and so on.  There will be children there from various different schools, some of whom will have very challenging behaviours for a number of reasons, and while that of itself isn't necessarily a problem I was concerned about the casual attitude of the staff I spoke to.  I've worked with children in a similar area, and unless all aspects of what goes on are very strictly regulated and supervised, all hell can break lose very quickly.

Although the club itself seems well run and I've heard positive reports about it, there seems to be a disconnect between it the minibus service.  I was told that it's not always the same driver so I'd have to make the 30 minute drive to my son's school every week to speak to the driver, assess his competence during that short conversation, decide whether I trusted him with my son, then if it seemed ok, hang about for the couple of hours my son was at the club, and still have no guarantee that the same driver would bring him back!  

If I decided on the day that I wasn't happy with the driver, that I saw, I'd have to deal with my son's distress at not having his expectations about going to the club met!

Phew!  So, you see, it was more straightforward to say, sorry, but it's not happening.

Instead, I pick him up straight after school, and we go to the library, where he often meets up with another boy and they chat and play the Xbox together.

That may (or may not) be in accordance with your legal system. I know it like this: if the administration keeps proofs (e.g. tapes) and you sue them, claiming that something or other has happened, and the proof is in their hands, they have to show it in court to prove your allegation is indeed wrong - or they'll lose.
"Privacy" doesn't count in court, of course.

I may be missing something, but can you drive him yourself?