A mother from Waco, Texas, experienced a frightening ordeal upon discovering that her son, who has severe autism, was mistakenly left on a school bus for an entire seven hours.
Shannon Jennings Hernandez expressed her shock and concern after realizing she hadn’t been informed about her son’s absence from class.
“He leaves the house around 7:09 a.m. to catch a smaller, specialized bus for special education students,” Jennings Hernandez recounted.
It wasn’t until approximately 3:40 p.m. on Monday that Hernandez received a call from the district’s transportation director, revealing that her son, Isaac, had been inadvertently left on the bus all day instead of attending school.
“He reassured me that Isaac was alright, though hungry. They provided him with food and arranged for a nurse to check his health,” she explained.
According to the district’s website, attendance is recorded daily at 10:00 a.m. Hernandez noted that it’s standard protocol for the school to alert parents if their child is marked absent.
“At 10:30 I would get a phone call or a text message, and sometimes I’d get an email that says your child was marked absent today,” she said.
Thankfully, she said Isaac is OK, but the outcome could have easily been much worse.
“The weather could have been Texas-usual weather. He could have got off the bus, you know, and wandered,” she said. “I was terrified because at some point, I know there was a way to alert them sooner. There has to be something better if that’s where we’re sending our kids.”
The mother said he son still doesn’t understand why it happened.
“He was questioning, you know, a lot of questions on the bus. He was nervous about being left again…he’s like, “I don’t ever want to be left on the bus again, mom.”
The school district said it is putting additional checks and fail-safes in place to prevent incidents like this from ever happening again.
The district also says it has taken steps to self-report the incident to the appropriate oversight agencies.
The driver and bus-aide have been put on administrative leave until further notice.
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