Pre-schooler left on Puyallup school bus

puyallupmommy said on February 11, 2010 at 2:04 PM

As a parent of children in this district (one in the preschool program) I admit, my first reaction was anger, shock, and disappointment. When I stopped to think about it however, I think it's important to realize that this driver is a PERSON too. A person who, I would assume, feels HORRIBLE about what they did. I suspect there is more to this story and I suggest we all hold judgment until the driver's side of the story is given, if it ever is. I cannot imagine the difficulties in driving a bus, ESPECIALLY the special needs buses, as it's incredibly stressful and emotionally taxing. The majority of these drivers are VERY good at their job. But just like in any job? Mistakes DO happen. This one, thankfully, had a safe ending. The Puyallup School Districts is one of the best in the state and their drivers are some of the best I've had the privilege of knowing. Hopefully the teachers involved are held accountable as well. They have a job to do too in getting children off the bus.

sparrow1973 said on February 11, 2010 at 9:48 AM

inyofacereality-I have never been to the DSHS office ever. I have never needed to use their services so I honestly do not know what you are talking about in regards to posting jobs. I do know that the transportation department is part of the Puyallup School District and NOT a bus company that is outsourced. I know of a few of them, First Student and Durham. Those are bus companies that you may be speaking of. They possibly post there. I do not know. Those who work as a driver for Puyallup ARE district employees. Jobs are posted through the school website. Of course the mechanic isn't a criminal because employees are fingerprinted and background checks are administered to work for a school district. Obviously your opinions are what you believe to be true. I can't change that so we will have to agree to disagree.

exidore said on February 10, 2010 at 5:46 AM

Unacceptable. Aren't many/most of these buses equipped with cameras? The folks in charge should start checking ALL of the cameras randomly. Any driver caught skipping the mandatory walk-through should be forced to spend their next two weeks of "warm up in the lounge" time doing walk-throughs on all parked buses. It's good training.

inyofacereality said on February 10, 2010 at 12:40 AM

sparrow1973 Go to the DSHS and see the weekly bus driver job fairs and fliers for employment they have there, it's all in plain sight. Then do your research, the state gives the bus company tax breaks/incentives for hiring people who can't take care of themselves. Anyway, Thank goodness the mechanic who found her wasn't a rapist/child molester. I bet you clowns who excuse this would have a different view if it were your child!

inforelife said on February 9, 2010 at 10:06 PM

I don't know why everybody is all worked up! It was just a kid, Their replaceable! It's not like it was a dog that was left on the bus.

lilmurch said on February 9, 2010 at 8:08 PM

i am a former left on the bus survivor, who was also a kindegartener who also fell asleep on the bus. I slept through the pick up and delivering of older kids in high school/ jr high and not one person had noticed I was asleep on the bus. I made it to the bus garage and the only reason I was found was somebody at the bus garage was checking the buses and found me sitting there waiting for someone to get me. I will not ever forget it but it did not damage me and all turned out ok. I do not believe this bus driver should lose their job. I dont think that anything more than a two week suspension should be doled out to this bus driver. shouldnt there have been a parent at the bus stop to meet this child coming off? if there was someone at this childs bus stop they would have found out soon that the child had not gotten off at their stop. the employees working in the schools transportation department are usually pretty quick to investigate to find out the location of the kids missed drop

speakthetruth said on February 9, 2010 at 8:00 PM

Do your job, or suffer the consequences.

coltonsdad said on February 9, 2010 at 7:19 PM

I am surprised that this was exposed…the District probably did not have an opportunity to cover it up.

coltonsdad said on February 9, 2010 at 7:18 PM

Yet another feather in Puyallup dysfunctional hat. Karen Hansen’s statement “The driver made a horrible error. It should never have happened," is a weak response at best. This is an incident that they could not cover up as they have done concerning the harassment and bullying of my son. Because of the student’s age, she was most likely a special education student It is also ironic that King 5 waited until this evening to air the story undoubtedly because the district requested it because they did not want a negative image portrayed before the levy vote. It is pathetic that the media tries to protect these districts. I am having a similar problem with the Tacoma News Tribune, I have document after document that shows district staff perjuring themselves at hearing and also the horrific treatment of our son but they refuse to look at it or publish it.

karoly said on February 9, 2010 at 6:50 PM

Folks, this was not a special needs child. It was a 4-year-old preschooler. In the PSD, preschooler and developmentally delayed aren't synonymous. This was not a substitute bus driver. I disagree that the subs break the rules more than the senior drivers. That is a totally inaccurate statement. They don't know the runs, they are scared to death that they are going to mess things up, and they follow the rules to the letter to avoid making an unsafe decision. Like I said before...you who are judging school bus drivers so harshly need to try being a school bus driver, especially if you think you could do it better. Oh, and I have never, ever taken a welfare dime. Never. One person's mistake does not mean that every bus driver cuts corners. Most all the drivers follow procedure. The PSD has some of the safest bus drivers in the state, and are proud of their safety records.

sheilapless70482 said on February 9, 2010 at 6:16 PM

How many times is this going to happen before the wrong person finds one of these poor kids. No excuses for this kind of mistake. Let's not blame the victim!

kaci96 said on February 9, 2010 at 6:07 PM

I think a lot of people are missing the point here. This was a 4 yr old. Most preschoolers that go to actual elementary schools are developmentally delayed. Imagine your 4 yr old who may have a delay is left on a bus by herself in a empty bus with no driver, unfamiliar area, and the bus doors might have been locked and she might have been stuck in there. Granted not ALL bus drivers are this careless, but for this little girl to have been left, is unacceptable. Proper protocol had not been followed especially concerning a preschooler. It sounds like this bus driver got complacent in her job and thought "it could never happen to me". As for my own personal experiences, the sub bus drivers dont usually follow protocol like regular route drivers which can be dangerous. I had one sub try to give my child to a complete stranger and was OK with it!! When your talking about a developmentally disabled child who cant speak there should be stricter guidelines.

bkkdr said on February 9, 2010 at 4:07 PM

It seems that people are quick to judge here. Not that I am making light of the situation, but haven't you ever made a mistake on your job? People are so quick to cast stones - It must be hard to be so perfect. I don't agree with the bus driver deciding procedure wasn't important and there should be consequences for that, but this isn't ALL bus drivers. And for those of you who are jumping all over the parents. Remember, this is a 4 year old, Preschooler, not school age. Just because I put my kids to bed at 8:00pm, doesn't mean they fall asleep. If someone called you a bad parent everytime your kids woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't go back to sleep, they'd all be wards of the state!! Just what we need, investigations against parents whose kids fall asleep in moving vehicles - give me a break!!!!

musicfreak said on February 9, 2010 at 3:21 PM

puyalluprox, I'm not unhappy in Puyallup. I'm unhappy with the bus driver that drove my son and other students all around creation on the activity bus and never dropped anyone off and yelled at my son.

skyjumperdave said on February 9, 2010 at 3:06 PM

I think probably one of the rules the bus companies have for the drivers is to get up and walk through the bus to see if there maybe a child still on it. I don't think that is so hard to do. But I believe this is the second one I have read about recently. I would think the district's would have a training session each year where their rules and something like this is gone over

puyalluprox said on February 9, 2010 at 2:31 PM

Sure are a lot of angry, thought-impaired people posting here today. Puyallup has some of the best school bus drivers in the state. But, like any profession, some don't do the best job they could or should day-in and day-out. If you feel so strongly that Puyallup is not good enough for you - PLEASE LEAVE!

musicfreak said on February 9, 2010 at 2:12 PM

Karoly, this driver never stopped ANYWHERE. It was to take the kids HOME. I'm sorry, it wasn't a game, it was practice. My bad. He was supposed to be taking the kids home, and never made one stop, and then stopped to pick up activity kids from the high school, at which point my son and a bunch of other kids got off the bus to call their parents/grandparents. It was ridiculous, driving just all around Puyallup, out to Tacoma, not making any stops.

yogibear said on February 9, 2010 at 2:09 PM

It takes about 30 seconds to check the bus......

letmeinplz said on February 9, 2010 at 2:07 PM

Wow! Inexcusable! Fired! I ride Metro daily, and while waiting for my bus every morning at Westlake Station, two Link Light Rail trains come by. Prior to each train's departure, the driver and a security officer walk both train cars, visually checking each one. You'd think the people charged with transporting our most precious cargo (our CHILDREN!) could do the same! Too anxious to get out of the bus for a smoke?!? Phew!

skippythedog said on February 9, 2010 at 1:49 PM

In this economy....should be no problem finding a new bus driver...

heyler7 said on February 9, 2010 at 1:46 PM

these kind of things happen, relax people... we live in a non-perfect world! Stop trying to make it perfect!

dacaptain said on February 9, 2010 at 1:38 PM

For the last five years, I was a substitute school bus driver for our local school district. Substitutes have a hard job. Trying to follow routes that the regular drivers have not updated but have changed, driving a different bus every time, and since our district covered a large metropolitan area, not knowing every side street. Working with the pre-school and kindergarten kids was the hardest. Probably the nicest little kids you would want to meet but having to deliver them to their house (our districts policy) took time. Looking for a house number is harder and more time consuming than dropping kids at an intersection. The regular driver had no problem since they did it time after time. Subs always took longer. Our district had a child left on a bus once. After that all buses (105 of them) had a system put in requiring the driver to go to the back of the bus to silence a buzzer every time the engine was shut off. If this didn’t happen within three minutes, the horn went off.

sparrow1973 said on February 9, 2010 at 1:20 PM

inyofacereality- Your comments are quite ignorant, and offensive. For one, Puyallup does not "recruit" people. They post jobs just like any other job out there. Puyallup's training is very extensive as I personally have been through it. So for you to call me a Welfare Wilma seriously ticks me off. You paint quite the broad brush saying that we don't take care of ourselves and our children. Really??? You have to stoop that low? I agree that what this driver did was negligent and procedure was not followed. To judge us all by one driver isn't right or fair. We take pride in our jobs and hold children's safety very high.

jamey said on February 9, 2010 at 1:18 PM

@bazwest - I love your posts. You do know when you get home, you will be sooooo dead. I can only tell you, happy wife, happy life. If you live, keep up the good work and informational posts.

bazwest said on February 9, 2010 at 1:10 PM

Oh man! Now Gregoire will probably want to start a new tax payer funded program mandating extra bus driver rules, weekly background checks, and video cameras in buses. Actually the kid will be just fine and will have a cool story to tell. My wife remembers being 4 or 5 years old and was accidentally left behind at a rest stop in the middle of Idaho. Her mother had told her to hurry up in the restroom and in the process of piling the other 3 kids in the car forgot about her and drove off. My wife came out and figured she had been too slow in the restroom and thought that the nice family that found her would be her new family. She wasn't happy about it, but figured it was her fault so she would just have to make the best of it. Needless to say her mother broke the speed limit getting back to the rest stop a half hour later when the error was discovered. She still turned out ok with only occasional neurotic tendencies.

kaci96 said on February 9, 2010 at 1:02 PM

As a parent of a pre-schooler in Puyallup, I have to say I have had more problems with the transportation here then anywhere i've been before. Including drivers getting lost and showing up more then 30 min late with my child. There is no excuse for NOT knowing a child got off the bus to school. But with the amount of substitute drivers I have seen in only the last week I could believe it might happen. So scary for the child, especially being a preschooler. There needs to be an overhaul of the system or something because its becoming outright ridiculous! Thank goodness for the great teachers or my child would be yanked out immediately! (And its not like we can drive them to school, their "home" school doesn't have room for him so my child is bussed clear across town)

tiggerme2 said on February 9, 2010 at 12:41 PM

A 13 year veteran driver has NO EXCUSS for this and should be put on UNPAID probation for this. I was a bus driver for years and was required to check my bus after every run. This was 30 years ago!

inyofacereality said on February 9, 2010 at 12:39 PM

Trust me no one from the school will be reprimanded. That's why they love their union...

inyofacereality said on February 9, 2010 at 12:36 PM

Hire quality drivers not Welfare rejects. Go to your nearest DSHS and see for yourself how they recruit losers to drive your kids around. These people don't take care of themselves or their own children, yet we should trust them with our children? School childrens safety should not be subject to a government jobs program for the ignorant. Nor should it be auctioned off to the lowest bidder. The Puyallup school district has to be aware of the problem and is pretending not to know or they just don't care what's going on with the kids. Either way , they are negligent.

coffeekate said on February 9, 2010 at 12:32 PM

another one. Since it wasn't the school office and teacher that reported this child missing, she was discovered by a mechanic, more people than just the driver need to be on administrative leave/fired. The checks and balance system is broken. The process should be driver to greeter to first teacher to administration. Nobody noticed a problem? That's four people who should be on leave/gone at a minimum. PS - some little kids fall asleep in moving vehicles regardless of how much sleep they've had.

inyofacereality said on February 9, 2010 at 12:29 PM

Typical bus drivers for Puyallup school district. I guess that is what happens when you recruit bus drivers from the DSHS recipient pool. Every day we have Welfare Wilma's speeding down the street, ignoring their pickup schedules, being rude to the kids (as if the kids are inconveniencing them) and running stop signs. They routinely pass my house at 20 mph and I live 2 houses from the corner stop sign, so naturally they run the sign. I have called the school out of concern for the childrens safety due to the ridiculous driving and buses not showing up to pick the kids up. THE SCHOOL and THE SCHOOL DISTRICT DID NOT CARE. Their response has always been,"if you have a problem call the bus service". The problem there is that the drivers lie to their dispatchers. The company went so far as to argue w/ me one day when I called to complain that the bus had not even entered the neighborhood for 3 days. They actually accused me of lying because their driver said she did follow her route.

whyso said on February 9, 2010 at 12:18 PM

so because a driver didn't follow his job and a child was left alone on the bus, a couple of you guys want to ridicule the parents or the home life of the child. WHAT!!! What does that have to do with the driver not doing his/her job and the leaving a child on the bus!!!

karoly said on February 9, 2010 at 12:18 PM

Oh, and this type of error happens worldwide, and has not occurred in Puyallup in over a decade. The "only in Puyallup" line is entirely inaccurate. If you think you could handle the job of professional school bus driver, by all means, give it a try. It is much more difficult than one could possibly imagine. This is not to excuse this driver's not following procedure, and the "post trip" clearly states that one must walk the length of the bus to search for students, but even on the best of days, bus driving is very, very stressful and difficult. Be thankful for those who do follow the rules and safely transport your children to and from school so you don't have to.

karoly said on February 9, 2010 at 12:11 PM

Sorry, Musicfreak, but that was not an "Activity Bus"...that was a sports run. It is against district policy to drop kids off while transporting them between schools, whether in-district or out of district, on a sports run. Furthermore, each child is accountable to the COACH who is riding on the bus at the time,. The Activity bus picks the students up at their "home school", after school, and delivers the students to their homes. There is a distinct difference between the two types of runs. The Activity bus is a daily bus, with the same driver every day, who know most of the students who ride the afternoon activity bus. Sports runs use drivers that do not have regularly scheduled daily runs, taking teams from one competition to another. The Puyallup School District has excellent bus drivers, who are well-trained and consider student safety their top priority. There are over 200 drivers, so to judge the entire Transportation Department because of one person's mistake is unfair.

lovemondays said on February 9, 2010 at 11:55 AM

FOR SURE, LET THEM GO ON FOREVER LEAVE. LET'S GET SOME DRIVERS THAT WANT TO DO THEIR JOBS. LEAVING KIDS ON A BUS (SLEEPING OR OTHERWISE) SHOULD NOT BE AN OPTION. AND WHY DIDN'T THE SCHOOL CALL HER HOME WHEN SHE DIDN'T SHOW UP AT SCHOOL.

firefoxtwo said on February 9, 2010 at 11:53 AM

Good Lord!!! Only in Puyallup! I think we are becoming South Kent.

musicfreak said on February 9, 2010 at 11:45 AM

The school bus drivers in Puyallup leave something to be desired. My son was on an activity bus after a football game (he was in 8th grade JV football), and the activity bus driver drove downtown Puyallup (the school's on South Hill), out to Tacoma and up the street my child should have been left on...the bus NEVER STOPPING, not once, in this forty-plus minute drive, and as he's driving by my son's grandparents' house, my son said, "Can you let me off here? My grandma lives right there" and pointed to their house. The bus driver said, "NO! I'm not stopping anywhere!" and he drove up to Rogers and all the kids got off. My son called my parents to come get him, and my mom wound up driving about four of the kids from my son's school that were on the bus to their homes.

dede1978 said on February 9, 2010 at 11:39 AM

All kidding aside, this doesn't excuse the driver from not doing the check of the bus. Maybe these "paid administrative" leaves should become unpaid. Maybe they'll do their job correctly. I'm sure there are others out there willing to do the job correctly????

clothyard said on February 9, 2010 at 11:37 AM

Good grief, another one? And what 4 year old falls asleep in the morning on a school bus. Someone needs to check into the home life of this child, but most of all, the driver needs to be sent home, for good. No one who is entrusted with school children should ever be allowed to fail like that without the most serious repercussion.

graham said on February 9, 2010 at 11:30 AM

Maybe kids need to go to bed early & not stay up all night. When i was in school none of us fell asleep on the bus

inforelife said on February 9, 2010 at 11:19 AM

The little girl was probably hiding from the police after doing random killings! Was she wearing a White Hoody?