Highlands mother angry bus driver left autistic son alone outside school

Rachael O’Connor said that her 9-year-old son sat and cried when he was unable to find an open door to his elementary school Thursday morning after a bus driver dropped him off late and left him alone.

O’Connor said her son, who has autism, pulled at the door he would normally go through at Highlands Elementary School, but it already was locked.

“He said he walked to the back of the school and started pulling at the back doors. He couldn’t get in,” O’Connor, of Harrison, said. “He just sat somewhere in the back of the school and didn’t know what to do.”

Another parent bringing their child to school found O’Connor’s son.

“They saw him sitting there crying, and they walked him to the correct door,” she said.

The bus driver no longer works for ABC Transit, Todd O’Shell, ABC Transit’s vice president of operations, said.

ABC Transit, now in its first year providing busing for Highlands, claims its internal investigation found the driver did not leave the child until the adult with a child at the school offered to take O’Connor’s son to the unlocked entrance. At one point, the driver “called out to Ms. O’Connor’s son to come back to the bus,” and then left after the adult offered to walk him to the other door, O’Shell said.

Leaving the child with someone other than a school-approved employee still was a “careless decision” that violated both school district and company policy, O’Shell said.

“Our driver made a critical mistake and should have never released Ms. O’Connor’s son to the adult,” O’Shell said. “Ms. O’Connor’s son should have been placed back on the bus and driven to the school’s back entrance.”

O’Connor said she calls the school every week with her work schedule, so officials know whether her son needs to be picked up at home, or the day care where she works.

The ABC Transit driver forgot to pick up her son from the day care during the normal bus run Thursday morning and wound up dropping off the other children and coming back to the day care to get him, according to both O’Connor and O’Shell.

O’Connor said her son told her that the driver instructed the boy to go to “door 20” when they arrived at Highlands Elementary, but he didn’t understand.

O’Connor said the driver should have stayed with her son until seeing a teacher, no matter how long that took.

She said the school had been anticipating her son’s arrival, but a teacher looking for him wasn’t sure what door he’d be at. The main entrance to Highlands Elementary is closed because of construction on its clock tower.

“The teacher was still trying to find him. I don’t know how long he would have been there if it wasn’t for the other parent,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor said she was further upset after contacting ABC Transit and being told that the situation was an “in-house” matter and the company couldn’t tell her anything else as early Friday.

O’Connor’s son had a different driver Friday morning — a woman who O’Connor said normally picks her son up from home and who O’Connor likes and trusts. That driver now will also pick up her son on days when he’s at the day care, O’Connor said.

ABC Transit officials plan to meet with O’Connor on Monday to review video footage of what happened, according to O’Shell.

“Luckily, it did get resolved,” she said. “I just don’t want it to happen to anyone or him. No child should be left outside of anywhere without an adult present if they’re not old enough to be left alone.”