The school bus driver who didn’t check her seats for kindergartners at the end of her run in Clarkston has been fired.
The complaint lodged by two mothers was substantiated, said DeKalb County School District spokesman Jeff Dickerson.
On the first day of school, Shawna Blackwood was planning to collect her daughter and nephew, but the driver rolled through the appointed stop.
A quick call to the principal, and the bus was ordered back to McLendon Elementary School. When Blackwood and her sister-in-law got there, however, they were confronted by a driver they described as surly who said she didn’t have their kids.
The mothers feared their 5-year-olds were wandering the streets. They soon realized, though, that the children actually were on the bus and had been the whole time. After their initial joy, the mothers imagined what could have happened if the driver had parked the bus overnight without noticing their kids.
“I’m glad they took action,” Blackwood said. “We were really upset.” She was disappointed that other officials were not disciplined, including a high-level administrator the sisters-in-law had contacted after the incident.
The school system hadn’t disciplined the driver in the days after the Aug. 13 incident, and they were demanding action. They said the administrator ignored them. “He was more concerned that I had his personal contact information rather than the issue at hand,” Blackwood said, “and he never got back to me on that.”
The school system suspended the driver after the sisters contacted the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other media.
Blackwood and her sister-in-law, Adelaide Blackwood, said they’re ready to put it all behind them. Their children, though apprehensive, rode the bus again Thursday for the first time since the incident.
They were smiling when they clambered down at their stop, Adelaide Blackwood said, adding that her niece noticed the difference from her first day of school: “She said, this bus driver didn’t leave and forget about me.”
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