On Thursday, a 5-year-old girl was erroneously left at the stop. The next day, another driver mistakenly dropped off a boy.
By MELANIE AVE
Published August 7, 2004
TAMPA - Two children were left at the same wrong school bus stop Thursday and Friday in Lutz's Harbor Lake subdivision by two different drivers.
Friday after school, a bus driver dropped a McKitrick Elementary School boy off at Harbor Lake and Aqua Springs. The bus stop was about 1 mile from the boy's correct stop at Fisherman Bend and Cypress Green.
A concerned parent took the boy to a nearby model home, where he was reunited with his mother after a call to the school. The name of the driver and age of the boy were unavailable Friday.
On Thursday, the first day of school in Hillsborough, another bus driver erroneously dropped a 5-year-old McKitrick Elementary kindergarten girl off at the same stop. District officials suspended that driver, Kathryn Buchman, with pay pending an investigation, schools spokesman Mark Hart said.
Hart said Buchman incorrectly told the child's mother, who was waiting at the next stop, that her daughter was never aboard. The crying girl was found about 15 minutes later wandering through a subdivision by another bus driver.
He said Buchman had not been interviewed by school officials yet. "We need to hear her side of the story," he said.
Buchman, 40, has been a bus driver since 1999. Records show she has received mostly good evaluations.
Five years ago, 10-year-old Eric Martin, a Walker Middle School student, was dropped off 4 miles from home at the wrong bus stop by a school bus driver. Eric was struck and killed by a car as he walked home in the dark along Lutz-Lake Fern Road.
The driver was cleared in the case. Eric's mother, Kimberly Martin, sued the Hillsborough School Board, claiming negligence by Linda Moore, who was driving Eric's bus that day. The school board settled out of court for the state-mandated maximum of $200,000.
"We can track FedEx packages across the country, and they can tell you where your $13 package is at any point in time," Martin said two years ago. "But we don't have any method to track our children once they get on a school bus."
This year, 90,000 children are riding about 1,115 buses to and from school in Hillsborough.
Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report. Melanie Ave can be reached at 813 226-3400 or melanie@sptimes.com
