Parents trust that school bus drivers will safely take their children where they need to go, but that trust was broken in an incident in early August. A 9-year-old boy in New Jersey was left alone on a school bus after he fell asleep and wandered around the transportation depot searching for help. While the child eventually found an adult and was brought back to school, the mother is angry that this happened in the first place.
Boy’s mother says the situation is “unacceptable”
On August 6, the boy had boarded the bus around 8 a.m. as he normally would for summer school at Union Valley Elementary School in Blackwood, according to 6ABC Philadelphia. But he fell asleep on the bus and seemingly no one checked to see if there were any children left onboard.
The boy’s mother, Wanda Chandler, said that her son woke up on the hot empty bus parked in the district’s transportation yard. Fortunately, the child didn’t panic and got himself out of the vehicle.
“I lifted up this thing to open the door,” the boy said. “I got off the bus and looked for anyone. I found this man, so I asked him, ‘Do you know where I can go back?”
He continued, “I was trying to be a big boy, so I just acted brave and normal.”
A district employee discovered the child lost in the parking lot, and Child Protective Services later transported him back to school.
However, Chandler said she received a call from the school saying that her son had not arrived at the elementary school two and half hours after he had boarded the bus. The mother says he has ADHD and that the situation was “unacceptable” and could have ended up much worse.
“I still have a lot of question that need answers. I was just given the bare minimum,” she said.
“A lot of things could’ve happened … but what if he didn’t wake up? What if he walked out into that bus depot and a stranger took him?”
Ironically, as the family that had moved to the district recently, the mother thought it “would be a good idea” to help her son acclimate to riding the bus by enrolling him in the summer program.
