For all his problems with speech and language, Ian loves playing with words. He loves foreign languages and finds misspellings very funny. He also loves creating his own words. Sometimes the words are a mash-up of things that he's picked up from his video games and cartoons. Sometimes he dreams them up on his own.
Lately, his favorite word is "invisi-gal," which basically means invisible. I suspect there must be a superhero called Invisi-Gal on some PBS show, but I'm not sure.
He loves using the word, invisi-gal, and will use it whenever he can. I'll come down to the basement and ask, "Ian, where's Jonah? Is he down in the basement with you?" Ian will cock his head, look me in the eyes, and say with a smirk, "No, he's invisi-gal."
Yesterday, I ran around the house doing last minute chores before Ian's bus showed up. We had a full afternoon. I had already made dinner for my kids and their cousins. I had packed up Ian's equipment for swimming. I left a note for Jonah to grab a slice of leftover pizza when he got off his camp bus.
At 3:00, Ian's bus wasn't there. No big deal, I thought. It's the first week of summer school, and there was a new driver. At 3:15, no Ian. I called his school to find out if the busses had left on time. The secretary advised to be patient, because it was only Day 2 of summer school. At 3:30, no Ian. I called the bus company. The dispatcher put me on hold and made some calls. She said that Ian would be there in two minutes. At 3:45, Ian showed up.
What happened? The bus driver forgot Ian was on the school bus. The school bus aide knew he was there, but didn't know the new bus route and couldn't communicate with the driver, because they don't speak the same language. So, the driver drove Ian all the way back to the bus depot before she realized that there was a kid still on the bus.
The real nightmare of a special ed mom is that her child will be forgotten in a school bus. There are several children that have died in the back of overheated school busses in bus depots. We're very aware that this can happen at any time to our kids.
As I cried to the school district's bus manager this morning about this incident, she said that no harm had been done. He hadn't been left alone in bus parking lot and died of heat exhaustion. I explained to the bus manager that harm had been done. My kid wasn't a bag of potatoes that was simply being taken from point A to point B. He's a human being. He trusted adults and they let him down.
I'm really shaken by this incident. My son was invisi-gal on the school bus.
Apt. 11d 
“The school bus aide knew he was there, but didn’t know the new bus route and couldn’t communicate with the driver, because they don’t speak the same language.”
!!!
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That’s awful. Hope it didn’t rattle Ian.
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This makes me ill.
Once, when we were on a playground, we encountered a two year-old who was happily playing, asking all the other adults to help him up on swings, give him lifts to the slides. When I asked him where his mom was, he said “at work” in two-year old language. As the day got later, and emptied of people who were unlikely to be the child’s parents (we were all of different races), we realized something was wrong and called the police. A few frantic adults came, reunited with the kid and went on their way. I remember being horrified and thinking there should be consequences.
I cannot imagine how terrible you must have felt. I don’t know if you can do it, because you have to think of what’s best for I. first and foremost, and you have to worry about whether making a big thing of the incident will hurt him in some way.
But, if you can, I urge you to do something about it. And, the right answer is not to simply fire/penalize/discipline the busdriver. This is a failure of the system (lack of communication/not knowing that a particular child was on the bus/missing checklists). Is there someone who can stand in for you? a lawyer, family friend, Steve? I know I would be a complete basket case if this had happen to my vulnerable child, angry but also just sick to my stomach and scared to death. My sister, though, is a great advocate in that circumstance (unfortunately she’s in the same place as the rest of us when having to advocate for her own child, but when she’s advocating for others she’s a rational steamroller, and not a basketcase).
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Oops, I realize that I forgot to mention that the playground kid had been left there by a nearby daycare. I’m guessing there were no actual consequences. We’re so vulnerable in situations like that.
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“This is a failure of the system (lack of communication/not knowing that a particular child was on the bus/missing checklists).”
And going carefully through the bus at the end of the route to make sure all the kids are off.
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Of course, just having a protocol isn’t enough–people have to follow it.
I was just looking at a Florida story from 2009 where a 3-year-old spent six hours strapped into a seat on a bus. It ws November, so fortunately, the kid was OK.
“The Osceola County School District suspended Gonzalez and Pacheco [the driver and aide] without pay Tuesday. They were arrested Thursday and charged with child neglect. Both have since quit their job. “It clearly was not done intentionally, but the law states if a child is in your custody they have certain responsibilities and obligations,” Lizasuain explained. The Osceola County School District says there is a strict protocol for sweeping the bus before and after students are suppose to be on it.”
http://www.wftv.com/news/21534680/detail.html
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Anyone who thinks that what you described involves “no harm” should not have control over children!
They are also not in very good touch with legal counsel for the bus company; I bet the lawyers would have a different view about whether this is worrisome. In fact, once you have prior indications of such a problem, you are on notice. Actual notice. That’s the kind of thing that makes lawyers really nervous.
Maybe you should ask the manager whether she has discussed the implications of their knowelwdge of this kind of problem with their legal counsel. And I don’t mean “threaten a lawsuit.” I mean, this is the kind of thing where concern about potential future liability should cause meaningful preventative measures to be taken NOW.
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How awful. I have no good legal or practical advice, but did think that if it helps at all, you could read him From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which makes getting left at the bus depot a part of their grand adventure en route to staying at the museum. But maybe there’s no possible way to spin this (to him) as an interesting story rather than entirely as a terrible thing.
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I’m sorry! How scary that must have been. I hope you will pursue this until 1.) someone acknowledges that harm was indeed done, and 2.) better protocol is put in place.
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I’m sorry, too.
Gal is a name in Hebrew, so maybe there is a show somewhere. It means wave, as in the sea, not in waving goodbye.
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I used to get forgotten on a school bus. We lived close, so I only rode once a week, to the nursery school my mother worked at that day, and the bus driver would forget.
I can’t remember what grade I was in-it would have been somewhere between k-2. I must have been pretty young, though, because the nursery school was not very far away at all. Even in Kindergarten, I should have been able to just walk.
I was a very talkative and articulate child, but not the sort to make a fuss. One of the reasons I always hated school buses.
A lot of rambling just to say that, yes it is a big deal to a kid. At least, enough that at age 45 I still remember what it felt like.
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So sorry you had to go through all that Laura! I remember my son once missed his stop. The driver was really great and circled back and dropped him off, but he was really shaken up over the incident.
In your situation a heart felt apology and a thorough review of procedures would have gone a long way in calming you. Instead the bus company instantly went into “no harm done” mode to relieve themselves of any potential liability by admitting fault.
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I’m so sorry that happened to Ian and to you. The plus side is that you were on top of it. But boy…the response of the bus company is totally not okay, and the situation is not okay.
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We had an incident similarly locally in the last couple of years. I remember that they came up with some policy that the bus driver had to walk to the back of the bus at the last stop- before they leave for the bus depot. Push it and see if you can get them to do something similar. Just because nothing horrible happened, doesn’t mean it can’t.
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I’m so sorry, Laura. As an FYI, for two summers, I had a job as a secretary to the director of a public school summer program for SE kids. One of my responsibilities was to wait until all the buses dropped off all the kids. We rarely had problems but we did have a few. I remember one kid being left on the bus; a few other times, parents weren’t there to pick up their kids. Having me there to wait and to call the bus company if I got a call from an anxious parent helped.
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This is so scary!! I’m so sorry that Ian had to go through this. How was/is he?
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In Kindergarten, my son was forgotten on the school bus too – and also made it all the way back to the bus company.
But the bus driver called me personally and apologized profusely and personally delivered him to my door and took complete responsibility. I felt that they took the mistake seriously and took action to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
I’m not as shocked as the actual ‘forgetting a kid’ on a bus – I suspect that happens quite a bit. But the “No Harm” attitude they gave you is really disturbing. This is exactly the kind of situation that can cause serious harm, and they should be responding in kind.
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Maybe somebody should teach Ian some rudimentary Spanish (note I am just assuming the bus driver speaks Spanish based on personal experience) so he can communicate with the bus driver if there is another emergency. Not that it his responsibility, but it could prove helpful. When I flew back to the US from Kyrgyzstan in December I had to basically give the Supershuttle driver directions in Spanish. After speaking Russian for years, it was not easy. Spanish is a distant fourth language for me after English, Russian, and German. But, it turns out I did not need to know all that much Spanish to give directions to my parent’s house in OC.
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It’s scary when the bus just doesn’t show up at your door. We had a scare this year with the school bus. After twenty minutes, I called the bus line, got routed to the special needs coordinator and asked about the whereabouts of autistic youngest’s bus. They had to check to find that there had been a missed connection with a kid who transfers at her school, so the bus had to return there. She eventually showed up, thirty-five minutes late and not upset, although some other children on the bus were clearly unsettled.
I hope that you can press the bus company to ensure that the drivers and aides communicate, even through a clipboard with checklist that the driver can be shown to indicate all children are on or off the bus as appropriate. The person who tried to brush you off was wrong!
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Get him a prepaid cellphone. They’re cheap–much cheaper than lawyers. Keep it charged, turned on, and in his backpack.
If he can handle the responsibility, teach him how to call home (program in all relevant family numbers), and 911.
At the very least, you will have attached a loud bell to your child, which you can ring at will if a future driver overlooks him.
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Some phones allow you to find the phone on a map (I’m thinking of “find my iPhone.)
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“Some phones allow you to find the phone on a map (I’m thinking of “find my iPhone.)”
Good point. A kid can still lose the phone, but he probably won’t both lose the phone and get left on the bus the same day.
Ian’s big enough that having a phone should take care of him, but raising heck is still the socially responsible thing to do on behalf of all the kids that are too little for phones or wouldn’t be able to manage them. As Laura mentioned, this scenario happens all the time, often with preschoolers who are strapped into car seats.
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“Get him a prepaid cellphone. They’re cheap–much cheaper than lawyers. Keep it charged, turned on, and in his backpack. ”
We lost my daughter at a major international airport last year (when she was nine). No institutional failure was involved — it was my attentive failure + my daughter’s mistaken decision making. She found her way back to us, and we were quite pleased with her rational behavior (after first getting lost, which was a mistake). My husband spent the ten minutes freaking out thinking she had been kidnapped.
Afterwards, we did buy her a phone. It has been great for our peace of mind and has given her more freedom than I could afford her without it (I let her go down to the dance pit of a recent teen concert we attended, for example). I now worry, though, about all the associated worries of a girl with a cell phone.
It might work for you, though, without the worries, as a way of being able to call him. Even if he doesn’t answer the phone, someone else might be able to hear it and give you a remote method of alerting people to him in a situation like this one. But, I worry about this solution if it becomes anything more than a backup. The school/school bus had an absolute responsibility to keep track of your child. It’s OK for you to have a backup but not OK for the school to depend on your backup. As Amy says, it’s not available to all the kids under their care.
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PS: In our last trip out of town, to a kid’s convention, I actually did investigate whether there was a rentable tracking device I could use with my children (yes, I’m that paranoid). I didn’t find one. Some of the large amusement parks (Disneyworld) have them available, but there’s no general service that you can use.
Has anyone used an iPhone for that feature? I haven’t thought it would work well enough to be worth the expense (iPhone contract + the mobileme service + the issues of giving a kid an iPhone).
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“Has anyone used an iPhone for that feature?”
I haven’t personally done this, but I know people who have done it with a non-iPhone.
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Freaky coincidence–my cell phone bill just arrived. It included a flyer for the Garmin GTU 10 Tracker. https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=67686&ra=true
It costs as much as an iphone. You can attach it to a backpack, a pet, luggage. It has fewer functions than a phone, and you can’t make it ring. You can track it on a map, though (they claim).
I am tempted to buy one to attach to my middle-school boy’s cheap, prepaid phone, which has been lost within the confines of his room. (That is a joke.)
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I just remembered a somewhat disturbing story involving special ed buses.
Our friend the mentally ill (bipolar) guy has been on a slow downward spiral for the past 10 years. Anyway, his last gig was driving a special ed bus. For a while he was doing great (he said), playing various educational CDs on the bus. Then, something happened (I was afraid to ask what exactly) and he got fired. Anyway, if he could get a job driving a special ed bus (having very well-documented anger issues), anybody could.
Just about all of the women who drove the regular bus on our route (which terminated at the Indian reservation) were pretty tough, competent middle-aged ladies, so it’s really hard for me to visualize these news stories.
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