School bus adventure continued

The morning of the second school day. All parents were again waiting at the north side of the street, as we were originally instructed.

All of a sudden, a bus arrived on the other side of the road again. It was the same driver as yesterday. I signed to her that she is not our bus, but she kept waving us over. Another parent finally went over to her and after brief conversation came back and said that this time the bus has the sign up and it's the correct route. It really was the correct route number posted on the bus. So, how could this have been the “wrong” bus yesterday? So, reluctantly, we put the kids on.

I asked the driver how come yesterday she was the “wrong” bus, and today she is the “correct” bus, referring to the bus numbers given to us by the school. She answered that the numbers given to us by the school have nothing to do with the route numbers and that she does not even know which school-issued number she is. Ok, so I asked how come she was the wrong “route” yesterday and today she is the correct route? She only answered that today she is route #XYZ that our kids should be on.

While this was going on, an enormous traffic pile-up was building on this busy, main street, increasing the risk that someone will drive through and injure our children.

Thankfully the school called, again, very apologetic. I talked to the principal who unequivocaly assured me that my child will without a doubt be put on the correct bus on the way back.

I made it clear that having the bus come on the wrong side of the street is unacceptable.
I also stressed that I was terrified not knowing where my child was for an hour and that for these problems to still not be sorted out two bus runs later is really a huge organization failure.

Sigh of a relief. Afternoon should be fine.

Well, afternoon came around and our child was nowhere. Fighting back that panic feeling one gets when they lose the knowledge of the whereabouts of a small child, knowing the probable cause, we again went an to making phone calls to the school. Other parents waiting at the stop were also understandably very, very upset by this time.

Turns out that our child was about to be put on the "correct" bus, but the bus driver refused to take the children who shared in this ordeal. She even radioed the dispatch that said that these children are not on the list (according to her). I know that at least our child definitely is on that route, since I had to get her entered manually and I repeated all the information back to the administrator twice, just to make sure.

So, she was put on the wrong bus yet again and arrived more than half hour late.

Now this experience is beginning to traumatize my child and I am sure that the other children are not taking it lightly as well. To my great surprise, I received an apology form my child and when I asked what it is for, I was told that it was an apology for blaming me for all these mishaps with the bus and that, even though I didn't know it, my child was initially very angry at me. Then I was told that my child no longer wishes to go to the school, because of fear of being misplaced and lost by the bus service and fear of not seeing parents again. Way to start the school year.

I share the same sentiment, I don't feel that my child is safe with a bus driver that cannot figure out her routes or with a company that fails to figure out theirs or hires drivers unable to fulfill the requirements of their job. I would have expected for the driver to learn her route long before she even drives a school bus through it. She could end-up in a dangerous situation by not knowing her route and having the added distraction of a full bus of children. Also, labeling the buses with two sets of numbers, one by the school and another by a route number, without any reference given to the parents and without any of these numbers being displayed on the bus, was an incredibly bad judgment call, as was not paying attention to the route numbers attached to a child's backpack, which we filled out as instructed.