Posted on 09/06/2005 12:26:35 PM PDT by Motherhood IS a career
A Marlboro school bus driver and a bus attendant were arrested last week following an incident in which a 5-year-old boy was left alone on a school bus for about four hours.
On Aug. 11, Geraldine Kauffman put her son, Justin, who has a language disability, on a bus headed for the Marl-boro Early Learning Center’s (MELC) special education summer program, but Justin never made it to school that day.
According to a press release issued by Monmouth County Prosecutor Luis A. Valentin last week, bus driver Cynthia Pekarchik and bus attendant Judith Eckel returned the bus to the municipal yard after dropping off children at MELC.
Authorities said Justin was still on the bus when it was parked at the municipal yard behind the Marlboro School District administration building on Township Drive.
The doors and windows on the bus remained closed and locked for almost four hours when temperatures that day reached about 90 degrees.
According to the prosecutor’s office, Pekarchik and Eckel failed to inspect the bus for any students prior to leaving the bus at the municipal yard.
At the end of the day when the bus returned to MELC to pick up the students for the ride home, Justin was discovered on the bus by his teacher.
According to the Marlboro school district, the teacher sent the child home on the bus and notified the school nurse, who then notified Assistant Super-intendent of Schools Marc Gaswirth.
Gaswirth said he called the transportation department and then called the Kauffmans, but by that time Geraldine Kauffman had already contacted the school.
Superintendent of Schools David Abbott was out of town last week.
Kauffman said when her son came home that afternoon he was sweating, his lunch had not been eaten and he had no papers in his bag. She said that led her to believe he had never been to school that day.
Kauffman said when she asked her son what happened, Justin told her the bus attendant said it was a secret about the bus and that if he talked about it he would get in trouble.
Gaswirth had no comment on that matter.
Justin received medical treatment for dehydration but no further injuries were reported. However, Kauffman said her son is experiencing nightmares and has developed a fear of entering hot cars.
“It’s been a nightmare for him,” she said.
Kauffman said she taught her children their telephone number and their address, and how to dial 911 in an emergency. She said that perhaps if she had taught Justin how to beep a horn, he could have gotten out of the bus. She said she believes other people will benefit from reading this story.
She said her primary issue with the way school officials and the bus personnel handled the situation was that after realizing Justin had been left on the bus all day, they sent him home on the bus.
“They should have realized his life was in danger. They should have worried about his life, not covering up something,” Kauffman said.
Following an investigation by the prosecutor’s office and the Marlboro Police Department, Pekarchik and Eckel were arrested on Aug. 16. They were both charged with endangering the welfare of a child, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Both defendants were released on $10,000 bail and were suspended from the Marlboro school district with pay. Pekarchik has been employed by the district for 22 years and Eckel has been employed by the district for six years.
In a statement, Valentin said, “Bus drivers and their aides are entrusted to care and safeguard the children aboard their vehicles. This incident could have had tragic consequences. The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office takes this matter very seriously.”
Gaswirth said it appears as though the school district’s procedures, which he called very tight procedures, were not followed.
According to Gaswirth, the district’s procedure includes a safety review that the transportation coordinator and the assistant are required to undergo at the beginning of every school year. He said there are also procedures that need to be followed. During the course of a run, the bus driver or bus attendant is supposed to do four checks to make sure there are no students left on the bus, he said.
Gaswirth said the district’s initial fundamental concern was and remains the health and welfare of the child. Now that the child’s safety has been assured, Gaswirth said the concern of the district turns to looking at the matter and ensuring other parents that this “deeply regrettable and disturbing incident” does not reflect on the services provided by the transportation department.
“The record of our drivers and attendants has been stellar in the past,” he said. “This is an isolated and very unfortunate incident that shouldn’t reflect the transportation employees or the entire district. We take the health and safety of our students very seriously.”
The Marlboro school district is conducting an internal investigation which Gaswirth said “will produce findings of facts and conclusions.”
Following the investigation, Abbott will discuss with the Board of Education how to handle the matter.
In the wake of the incident, Gaswirth said the training for bus drivers and bus attendants will include “highly reinforced procedures.”
A letter was sent home on Aug. 19 to parents in the district informing them of the incident and ensuring them that the matter was being handled.
Now she says that the drivers will try to get off by claiming that her son was at the playground all day, instead of trapped in a bus on a sweltering day in the middle of August for 3-4 hours. And she's fuming.
Not only was there gross negligence involved on the part of both bus drivers, but then they tried to cover up the incident. Then, adding insult to injury, the drivers have been suspended with pay. Thank you, NJEA! Effectively, Mrs. Kauffman's (and our) tax dollars are going into the pockets of the school employees who nearly killed her son.
She needs help... the legal kind. She has contacted a couple of lawyers, but for some reason, lawyers are never receptive when a real injustice has been done. They only care if there's lots of quick money involved. She's not as interested in money as she is in changing things so that this never happens again.
So if anyone knows anyone, or can recommend resources, please let me know.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Kauffman, myself, and a number of other concerned parents are planning to do something about just how much the unions can dictate around here. I realize that it's a David and Goliath battle, but something has to be done, and it starts now. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
When Justin didn't arrive at school, why didn't the teacher or adminstrator call her? Don't they take attendance?
This is really disturbing. I can only imagine how mad the parents are.
Why was this posted to the Activism Sidebar?
"Then, adding insult to injury, the drivers have been suspended with pay"
The drivers are responsible for all their passengers - suspending with pay is S.O.P. in these days of scumbag lawyers.
Unfortunately, these lawyers write these laws to profit themselves off the honest taxpayer since they get to also represent these criminals for their CUT of the $$$$.
When - IF - the drivers are found guilty then thanks to the scumbag-lawyers, they will not have to give back any of the money they received for doing absolutely NOTHING --- just like a scumbag lawyer and their scion politicians and their masters in black robes.
It used to be (in pre-lawyer scum days back in the 60's and early 70's) if you were suspended, it was with NO pay since you didn't work. But this being the nanny/mammy welfare state where lawyer scum have re-writen the laws giving THEM the power over all Americans. -
Welcome to the Kommunist Republik of the Union of Socialized States of Amerika --- the USSA.
( How's that for a stretch of subject matter!?? )
ping
It's a union thing. Probably part of the contract. In any rational environment, these employees would have been fired on the spot, but because they're school employees, different rules apply.
After some similar incidents that resulted in deaths, the Arkansas legislature recently passed a law requiring that school vans and buses cannot be switched off at the driver's seat. The driver must walk to the back of the bus to access the cutoff switch to stop the engine. This effectively requires the driver to walk past all of the passenger seats - and hopefully spot any passengers who did not disembark. I suggest Mrs. Kauffman contact her state representative to get a similar law passed.
Now THAT would make way too much sense. I'm sure it's in the union contract that the teachers can't be bothered with that type of work.
School policy is for parents to call the school when a child is expected to be absent. You would think that if/when a parent DOESN'T call, someone follows up on the loophole in the flow of information, but apparently not.
The thing is, IF the two drivers had followed school policy -- which is to check the bus at various locations before bringing it back to the bus depot, this would not have happened. But they didn't, so it did, and you can't even fire them without some sort of lengthy union dictated process.
How many of you are allowed to be fired without a time consuming "process" when you screw up at your job -- and I mean screw up BIG TIME?
It's not activism, but it is news. It was a news article in the local newspaper. (Then I went to the trouble of looking up the family involved.)
"The driver must walk to the back of the bus to access the cutoff switch to stop the engine. This effectively requires the driver to walk past all of the passenger seats - and hopefully spot any passengers who did not disembark."
That sounds like a stupid law. What if they had to turn off the bus in an emergency? What do you have to do to start it, get out front and turn a crank?
That would be one possible solution. But I don't agree with it. Here's why:
The rules are clear: the driver is supposed to check the bus. Placing the access to the cutoff switch at the back of the bus, at a cost to be borne by the tax payers, would serve the same function as putting child safety caps on baby oil. Except these are not children, these are adults, and it's not baby oil, it's a bus.
Now I'm not saying that child safety caps are an entirely bad idea, but the point is that employees who are responsible for children MUST follow the rules, and if they don't, they MUST be punished severely. Few things motivate people more than fear -- fear of losing their job, their pay, their career, their pension, their future, their freedom, fear of landing their ass in the can for the next decade or so. The NEA should not be allowed to stand in the way of that.
It's not rocket science. Just check the d--mn bus! An unimpaired chimp could be trained to do it, why not a bus driver? Why should this cost the taxpayers more and more?
The solution is for people to just do their jobs responsibly, or suffer the consequences. And if they don't feel up to the task, they should move over and let someone else take the job.
Right now, the public can put all the pressure they want on the school board, and all the pressure they want on the school superintendent, and it gets them nowhere, because the union contract is gospel, according to the NEA.
And to digress... I think it makes a lot of sense to at least try to start networking at the grass roots level for law firms that might be interested in taking on some of these cases. The left has been legislating with the courts for years, and the civil service unions have effectively immunized themselves from attack from any other level. Try to address it at the local level and you find out it's a state issue... try at the state level and it's a federal issue... try at the federal level and it's a local issues all over again... the NEA is masters at it.
So it makes sense to try to use the courts along with a sympathetic lawyer or two, the same way that left does. Use it to raise their cost of doing business... make it cheaper for them to give in on some of their more extreme issues rather than be dragged into court over them all.
This is a slightly different situation where a child's well being was put at risk because of gross incompetence, but it still makes sense to try and build the legal network. I know there are places which are generally anti union like the Cato institute, or interested in constitutional issues like landmark legal... but there must be one lawyer out there in New Jersey who wants to make a name for himself. This case might be an opportunity.
And as the tide continues to flow away from the political left, there will be more and more of these cases.
School starts tomorrow in our town, and the bus will be pulling up and the end of our driveway. My wife will take our sweet innocent 5 year old girl and hand her off to a hapless lazy hack who has complete job security thanks to the union that protects them from all but the most horrendous incompetence.
It's not right... and we should be able to fight it in court. So if you know of any lawyers who would consider doing the right thing instead of the profitable thing, please freepmail the poster. Thanks.
If my kid is not at school and I don't call to say she is going to be absent - they call me by 9:00 am. This school takes absolutely NO resposibility for the child then do they? Who would hand their child off to people that don't even care whether they are there?
BTTT
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