A 9-year-old Marietta boy with autism was left to overheat on his family’s front porch, his mother said.
Erica Satterwhite told Channel 2 Action News her son’s school bus driver didn’t take him to his after-school program and instead dropped him at home without making sure anyone was there.
No one was home and Caleb sat unattended for three hours, the news station reported.
Satterwhite said she’d notified Caleb’s teacher and staff members at Sawyer Elementary School that she would be there to pick up her son when the after-school program ended.
“I made sure to make them aware that he was to stay in school, so I don’t understand,” Satterwhite told Channel 2.
But when she arrived to pick him up, Caleb was nowhere to be found and officials told her he never arrived. She rushed home and found her son sprawled out on the porch, overheated from the summer temperatures.
“Somebody could have been watching him and took him away and I would have never saw my child again,” she said, adding that the same thing happened at the end of the school year in May.
Grant Rivera, the superintendent of Marietta City Schools, admitted to Channel 2 the staff made a mistake.
“I'm very aware of the opportunities where we should have seized to do better," he said.
But when the news station asked him if anyone would be reprimanded, Rivera said no.
"At this point, based on my investigation, I do not believe that there is any personnel action that needs to be taken," Rivera said.
The superintendent said staff reviewed the procedures and will “go above and beyond” to ensure that this never happens again.
Satterwhite said that wasn’t good enough.
"They need to take this seriously because somebody's child could end up dead, hurt or anything," she said.
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