NY: Kids being left on school buses not unique to NYC

By JENNIFER PELTZ
January 6, 2009

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jy_FSP-f7uJ_35kYR6inrDJw1BHQD95HT1K00

NEW YORK (AP) — Profoundly disabled Edwin Rivera was left alone on a school bus in the bitter cold of New Year's Eve and wasn't found until 17 hours later, curled up but still alive.

But experts say such cases are not uncommon, with up to 75 school bus strandings every year nationwide.

A 4-year-old Milwaukee boy was left on a bus for hours on a 25-degree day in December 2007, and a girl the same age was left in nearly 100-degree heat last June in Columbia, S.C. Three South Bend, Ind., students have been left on buses in separate incidents this school year. One 4-year-old girl with special needs was left behind — twice in 10 months — in Newington, Conn.

Some schools have revamped procedures and equipped buses with alarms and cameras. Legislation, prosecutions and lawsuits have been aimed at the problem.

"You'd think that now we've got it to the point where everybody understands how important this is," yet incidents continue, said New Jersey state Sen. Fred Madden, an architect of a 2007 state law that requires at least a six-month license suspension for drivers who leave students on school buses.

"I almost thought, when I wrote the bill, that I was legislating common sense," the Democrat lawmaker said.

The issue has drawn more attention since Rivera's ordeal. A bus matron is accused of knowingly abandoning him because she had to get to a New Year's Eve appointment, leaving him strapped into his seat as the temperature fell to 15 degrees.

The 6-foot-2 Rivera, who has cerebral palsy and attends a private special-needs school, is unable to communicate verbally. The 22-year-old man was discharged from a hospital Monday.

School transportation organizations say there are no official statistics on how many students get stranded on buses, although it is a small percentage of the 26 million children nationwide who ride buses each day.

Mike Martin, executive director of the Albany-based National Association for Pupil Transportation, estimates he hears of as many as 75 incidents annually.

School transportation experts say traffic and other distractions can make it harder than it appears to ensure that no child is left behind, but Martin says he has yet to hear "a truly legitimate excuse."

Bus workers are often suspended or fired over the incidents. Some face prosecution, including a driver and matron who have pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment charges after a 3-year-old autistic boy languished on a bus in the Bronx for six hours in October. They have been barred from future bus work for city schools, Chancellor Joel Klein has said.

Criminal charges sometimes prove hard to pursue. A grand jury in Rolling Fork, Miss., declined to indict an escort in the death of a 19-month-old left in a sweltering van for at least six hours at a day care center in July 2007. A judge dismissed a 2005 child abuse charge against a substitute driver after a disabled first-grader was left in a van for seven hours in Kearney, Neb.

The Kearney boy's family settled a lawsuit against the school district for $10,000; the Mississippi toddler's parents also have sued.

Many school systems crack down themselves. After a handful of incidents from 2003 to 2007, Lafayette Parish, La., instituted a mandatory, 20-day unpaid suspension for drivers after a first stranding and firing after a second. Suspension has been used at least once, transportation director Bill Samec said.

Public schools in Newington, Conn. — where the same girl was briefly stranded twice — have since spent about $12,000 installing alarms designed to spur drivers to check their buses for lingering children, transportation manager Alan Avery said.

Other measures include having drivers state for the record in front of video cameras that their buses are clear.

"We have done everything we can," said Avery, who oversees the transportation of about 3,750 students.

School transportation officials say all the techniques and technology ultimately depend on bus drivers and matrons doing their jobs, which can involve keeping count of dozens of children and hunting for a snoozing small fry who might have slipped between seats.

"Looking for a child on a bus, on the surface, seems to be a very simple task that, underneath the surface, is much more difficult that what we realize," said Kathleen Furneaux, executive director of the Syracuse-based Pupil Transportation Safety Institute.

In Rivera's case, however, prosecutors say bus matron Linda Hockaday knew he was asleep on the bus when she got off, but didn't tell the driver because she didn't want to double back to Rivera's home.

A lawyer for Hockaday, 51, who has been fired and charged with reckless endangerment, has suggested the driver should bear some of the blame. Hockaday has not entered a plea. The driver has not been charged.