‘This mistake shouldn’t have ever happened’: Texas father says bus driver lost track of his 5-year-old son

ABILENE, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) – An Abilene father is expressing concern after he says an Abilene ISD bus driver overrode a scholar identification system and misplaced monitor of his 5-year-old son.

Tuesday afternoon, Nate, who doesn’t want to be recognized so his final identify has been excluded from this report, says he acquired a name from Day Nursery as a result of they had been involved his son had not confirmed up.

“He will get taken from faculty to the orange avenue location of Day Nursery after which the Cedar Road location will come and we choose him up from there,” stated Nate. 

In line with Nate, youngsters getting on the Abilene Independence Faculty District (AISD) buses should scan out and in with their IDs. 

“At the moment transportation was referred to as, and the bus driver stated ‘no he received dropped off at his authentic cease’,” stated Nate. 

However in Nate’s son’s case, he scanned in however by no means scanned out. After 45 minutes of panic and a number of telephone calls, Nate was knowledgeable by AISD’s Transportation Division that his son was discovered on the bus asleep on the ground. 

“It’s the manipulating of the protection system in place is the most important factor that I’m upset about,” stated Nate. 

Nate defined he was informed that bus drivers have the choice to override the system manually, which means the bus driver marked that his son had gotten off the bus.  

“After which to not come clean with it and say yea this driver must be retrained, properly we’ve talked to him, and we coached him into not making this error once more. The error shouldn’t have ever occurred within the first place,” stated Nate.   

AISD’s Affiliate Superintendent of Operations, Scott Mclean says having the override perform is an extra security function.  

“If that functionality wasn’t there for the drivers to do it, then when college students present up with out their bus tag, then we’d be refusing ridership to a lot of college students,” stated Mclean.  

Mclean says though the bus driver misused the system, it nonetheless was a useful device in finding Nate’s son.  

“Ought to there be an incident, we all know precisely who’s on that bus so we will be held accountable for these college students,” stated Mclean  

In an effort to ensure one thing like this by no means occurs once more, Mclean says AISD will incorporate this incident into its bus driver security coaching. 

Mclean is hoping to implement extra security measures for folks by providing a downloadable app during which mother and father can monitor their youngsters whereas on the bus. 

This app will be anticipated to be activated as early as subsequent faculty 12 months.