Problems with children ending up in wrong places are forcing the school district to consider more options.
By MELANIE AVE
Published August 10, 2004
TAMPA - At least four children dropped at wrong bus stops. Two others placed on the wrong bus. And another missing for about five hours on Monday.
Those are just a few of the busing problems marking the initial days of the school year in Hillsborough County, the first year with the new controlled choice student assignment plan.
In at least four cases since classes resumed Thursday, the lost or misplaced children were in kindergarten.
Superintendent Earl Lennard said he's making it a priority to figure out the reasons behind the busing problems and the role "the human element" played in each. Only one bus driver has been disciplined so far.
"Each individual incident we're investigating," he said.
One option being discussed is requiring all kindergarteners to wear identification tags saying where they are going, said Hillsborough schools spokesman Mark Hart. If they don't have them, then bus drivers would not pick them up or take them home.
Many schools ask students to wear badges, tags or wristbands, but in many cases the children do not and are still allowed to ride the bus.
"The kindergarteners seem to be the biggest issue," Hart said. "The kindergarteners are especially vulnerable."
With multiple new routes and stops this year under the choice plan, which replaces busing for desegregation, countless children have boarded wrong buses and been taken to the wrong schools. A third grid of bus routes for children participating in choice was added to the routes for traditional and magnet schools.
About 90,000 children - half the county's students - ride the bus to school. Here's a sampling of the problems:
Monday, a kindergarten student at newly opened Davis Elementary School in the Town 'N Country area was missing for about an hour after her mother gave the school the wrong bus number for her to ride. She was dropped off in the Timberlane subdivision and was taken home with two other girls from Davis. The girl's grandfather called the school.
Monday afternoon, also at Davis, a first-grade boy boarded a bus for home instead of one for an afterschool program. He had come to school without the tag indicating which bus to ride home.
Monday, a Martinez Middle School sixth-grader could not be located after he missed two buses. The driver of the first bus that was two minutes early, went to his door and knocked. The boy was later found at a doctor's appointment.
Also on Monday, a group of parents drove several students to Martinez Middle after the bus was late because its original driver had been terminated. "They got tired of waiting," Hart said.
Friday, a 5-year-old kindergarten boy from Just Elementary School, who lives in West Tampa, boarded the wrong bus and was dropped off at the Central Park Village public housing complex instead of being taken to an afterschool program. A 9-year-old girl took him to her aunt's home and called his mother.
Friday, a Corr Elementary School kindergartener rode a bus home instead of one to an afterschool program.
Thursday and again Friday, two bus drivers dropped two McKitrick Elementary School children off at a Lutz bus stop in the Harbor Lake subdivision, about a mile from their correct stop. One girl, a 5-year-old kindergartener, was found crying alone by another bus driver, who took her to the correct stop. The other child was taken to a nearby model home and reunited with his mother.
One of the drivers, Kathryn Buchman, has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.
