3-year-old Batavia special-needs student left on bus
A 3-year-old boy was apparently sleeping on the school bus when it stopped to drop off students at a Batavia school, and was not spotted until the bus arrived at its terminal, according to the district’s superintendent.
The incident, which occurred Friday, follows an already rocky start for the Batavia school district’s newly contracted bus company.
The boy’s mom put him on the bus headed to the Early Childhood Center at Alice Gustafson Elementary just before 9 a.m., but she received a call from the school at 10:41 a.m. asking why he was not at school, according to police.
The Early Childhood Center is for special-needs students, and bus monitors meet students at the bus when they arrive and check them off, Superintendent Jack Barshinger said.
The school also has a second system in place with the bus company — the driver is supposed to pull over in a safe location after dropping off students to make sure no one is on the bus, Barshinger said, but that did not happen.
“We had two systems here that worked and one that failed,” Barshinger said.
By the time the school realized the boy had not gotten off the bus and contacted Joliet-based Illinois Central School Bus, the driver already was on the way back to the school with the boy.
“The child was never left alone,” Barshinger said. “That has been verified through the surveillance system.”
The school already has implemented a new policy that will have the monitors who check in students as they get off actually boarding the bus to make sure nobody is left, Barshinger said.
“We have a new bus company and new procedures that need to get worked out,” he said.
To start the school year, many of the buses were running up to 40 minutes late, which school officials blames on new and changed routes during the company’s first year in Batavia.
Special education busing also was a problem, as some of the buses didn’t have the proper equipment such as harnesses for some students’ needs, Barshinger said in late August.