Missouri kindergartner left on bus in cold

[proud2BlibKansan]

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. | A 5-year-old southeast Missouri boy is OK after being left on a school bus for about five hours in frigid weather.

Zayvion Johnson of Poplar Bluff was very cold after the incident Tuesday, but a hospital examination found he was unharmed.

The Poplar Bluff Daily American Republic says police are investigating, and school officials admit procedures broke down. So far, the driver has not lost his job or been charged with a crime.

Zayvion’s mother put him on the bus Tuesday morning. About 1:15 p.m., the school called to ask why the boy was not in class.

Zayvion had fallen asleep on the bus. The driver said he did a walkthrough but didn’t see anyone.

But after getting a call about the missing boy, the driver checked again and found the child on the bus.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/1671694.html

This happened in our urban district and there were cries to hang the driver, fire the teacher and fine the district. The driver did get fired and the bus company had to begin hanging a sign in the back of the bus that says NO STUDENTS ON BOARD.

It will be interesting to see what happens to this driver and the school district.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. If the kid was curled up on the seat and the driver was just looking for heads and didn't

go all the way down the aisle, he could have missed the kid and still have "checked."

This is the exact reason why the driver has to go down and do a seat by seat check. It's a really lucky thing that little guy is ok.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. That is now the policy in my district

They are to check seat by seat and then hang the sign in the back window.

[Berry Cool]

17. Today, bus seats are so high you can't even see the kids' heads above the seats.

The ONLY way to do any kind of a real inspection is to go down every aisle and look in each and every seat.

[KansDem]

2. And aren't we about to experience the coldest day(s) on record?

This morning KCTV-5 reported Saturday will be negative-18 degrees!

Zayvion had fallen asleep on the bus. The driver said he did a walkthrough but didn’t see anyone.--I just don't see how this could happen...:shrug:

[rgbecker]

3. the bus company had to begin hanging a sign in the back of the bus that says NO STUDENTS ON BOARD.

OMG! More work just to make sure no kids die on a bus. What will they ask of those drivers next?

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Well it seems like a driver who had sense

would check the bus without it being in the job description.

Obviously, this one in the OP didn't have that sense.

[rgbecker]

10. Sometimes even those with sense need help and a reminder.

Everybody is helped with a little checklist, routine to go by to make sure things don't slip through the cracks in life. I don't think it would be asking too much to ask the drivers to check the bus and post the sign showing they have.

Reads like this driver checked but missed the little tike.

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. How can you check and not see a kid??

That's just nuts. There aren't a bunch of hiding places on a school bus.

This driver didn't check.

[Laura902]

4. Aww poor kid

that must have been so frightening to wake up in the cold on a bus :cry:

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. Yeah. He must have been so cold and so scared. :^(

[LiberalFighter]

8. Is the school at fault too? I noticed they didn't call til about 1:15pm.

[valerief]

9. Damn straight! nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. And some schools don't call at all when kids are absent

It's a sticking point every year. Who has the time to call? Should we call every day or wait till they are gone more than one day?

I always check with the office to see if the parent has called (that's the district policy - the parent is supposed to call when the child is absent) and if the parent has not called, I will call or sometimes the secretary offers to call.

[AwakeAtLast]

13. It happened in Lafeyette, IN a couple of days ago, too

A second grade student fell asleep and the driver admitted he did not inspect the bus before he parked it. News reports said the driver will most like lose his job and face a $500 fine.

http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=11779175

[immoderate]

14. If no harm is done, I wouldn't fire the driver. *Dons flame suit.*

If he is a normal human being, he will undergo a moment (or more) of real terror when he realizes what he has done. This driver will NEVER leave a kid on a bus again. The one who replaces him might not have had this experience, and learned this lesson.

Should he be reprimanded and punished? Sure. That's additional reinforcement. But firing for this reeks of zero tolerance. It denies capability for improvement and redemption, and disrupts lives unnecessarily. I'm speculating that he did his "seat check" but carelessly. He won't do that again.

--imm

[LWolf]

15. Fire the teacher because the bus driver

didn't notice that the boy had fallen asleep?

:wtf:

I'm glad the boy is okay. I feel for the bus driver. Obviously, when you are transporting small children, a check has to be thorough, and he dropped the ball, but still...

It's not hard to miss a small body curled up asleep.

My district missed a catastrophe yesterday.

After unusually warm weather, and enough rain to soak us, it froze up quickly Wednesday afternoon. All that wet from the rain left the entire region one big skating rink. I had to break ice off the door of my truck to get it open after school on Wednesday. By Thursday morning, I didn't know if I could make it to the barn to feed. The bare dirt was "slick as snot," as my mother described it, and it's a long, dark trip down steps, over a wooden sidewalk, and out to the barn. I nearly fell getting the barn door open, and after hauling hay out to my 3 horses, I almost didn't make it back into the barn.

Our district DID call a 2-hour delay, but the roads were no better, and, unlike all the rest of the local districts, they stayed open and ran the buses anyway. We had buses sliding all over town. Miraculously, no one was hurt. They DID cancel all after school programs, since buses have to run to take them home late in the evening.

I've been wondering what the bus drivers had to say to the district heads who sent them out.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. Yes fire the teacher

There were letters to the editor and some people even called the school and the district office, demanding that the teacher be fired.

This was before the internet or you know the comment boards would have been on fire. LOL

[noamnety]

18. On my daughter's first day of school

she was signed up to go to latchkey, because I didn't get off work for several hours after her first grade let out. The teacher lined up all the kids at the end of the day, including my daughter, and put them on the bus.

When I got off work to pick her up from latchkey, she was nowhere to be found, nobody could tell me why she wasn't there.

Turns out she went home. I asked her how she knew when to get off the bus, she said she looked around, the street looked familiar, so she got off. She didn't carry a key to the house, it just happened that the back door was open. Otherwise she would have been locked out for hours, no bathroom, no drinks, no phone, no way to cool off in the 90 degree August heat, no neighbors that she knew; we had just moved there.

I complained to the school but I never thought to demand that anyone get fired. If some harm had happened to her, sure I might have gone a different way. But she was fine, not traumatized at all (kids often don't see the danger in things that adults see). I demanded that they figure out a way that this never happened again, and I'm sure the teacher was scared straight, and that was enough.